1994-08-23 - Nuclear Weapons Material

Header Data

From: pstemari@bismark.cbis.com (Paul J. Ste. Marie)
To: werewolf@io.org
Message Hash: 80ba5d050a0d3b6f08a022b77546b5995e86ff866455ad6331059b0a7847afda
Message ID: <9408231245.AA18083@focis.sda.cbis.COM>
Reply To: <paBMkOwscIgG070yn@io.org>
UTC Datetime: 1994-08-23 12:45:44 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 05:45:44 PDT

Raw message

From: pstemari@bismark.cbis.com (Paul J. Ste. Marie)
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 05:45:44 PDT
To: werewolf@io.org
Subject: Nuclear Weapons Material
In-Reply-To: <paBMkOwscIgG070yn@io.org>
Message-ID: <9408231245.AA18083@focis.sda.cbis.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 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.

The "trigger" isn't tritium.  Tritium (along with lithium 6) is used
in fusion bombs.  A fission-only device, ala Hiroshima or Nagasaki,
doesn't require any.

The trigger in the center of the plutonium core is a neutron source,
polonium if memory serves correctly.  Tritium is a beta emitter.

	--Paul

Thread

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• 1994-08-22 (Mon, 22 Aug 94 00:03:11 PDT) - Nuclear Weapons Material - iqg1550@acf4.NYU.EDU (iqg1550)
  • 1994-08-22 (Mon, 22 Aug 94 06:35:57 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@imsi.com>
    • 1994-08-23 (Mon, 22 Aug 94 22:13:48 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - werewolf@io.org (Mark Terka)
      • 1994-08-23 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 05:45:44 PDT) - Nuclear Weapons Material - pstemari@bismark.cbis.com (Paul J. Ste. Marie)
      • 1994-08-23 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 06:11:22 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - joshua geller <joshua@cae.retix.com>
      • 1994-08-23 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 06:18:59 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@imsi.com>
        • 1994-08-23 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 07:36:31 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us>
        • 1994-08-24 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 19:20:47 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - khijol!erc@apple.com (Ed Carp [Sysadmin])
      • 1994-08-23 (Tue, 23 Aug 94 14:34:51 PDT) - Re: Nuclear Weapons Material - Jonathan Cooper <entropy@IntNet.net>