From: kkirksey@world.std.com (Ken Kirksey)
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 10:39:30 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
Message-ID: <199408241739.AA29066@world.std.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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>Mark Terka says:
>> Not to mention the fact that without tritium, the "trigger" for nuclear
>> weapons (and extremely expensive and rare at $ 100m a gram) all you have
>> is a radioactive paperweight.
>
>This is sheer ignorance. First of all, tritium is not nearly that
>expensive. Its quite cheap, in fact, and can be manufactured without
>that much trouble. Second of all, tritium is not a necessary component
>of non-thermonuclear (i.e. hydrogen) bombs. Third, tritium isn't a
>"trigger".

I remember reading an article recently (though I can't remember where)
about making a pure fusion bomb without the need for a fission trigger.
It involved using tritium and a class a VERY high velocity high explosives
known as ballotechnics.  According to this article, these bombs could be
made as small or smaller than a simple fission bomb and would be much harder
to detect, the upshot being that this kind of device was more of a concern
than a fission bomb vis a vis terrorist useage.  

Does anyone have any more technical details on this type of fusion device?
I'll have to see if I can dig out that article sometime.

Ken

= Ken Kirksey             And the Clinton administration launched an attack on =
= kkirksey@world.std.com  people in Texas because those people were religious  =
= Mac Guru & Developer    nuts with guns.  Hell, this country was founded by   =
=                         religious nuts with guns.            - P.J. O'Rourke =

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