[87767] in Cypherpunks
Re: russia_1.html
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Mon Oct 6 13:16:08 1997
In-Reply-To: <199710061350.GAA06107@toad.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 09:37:45 -0700
To: "Peter Trei" <trei@process.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
Cc: trei@process.com
Reply-To: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
At 3:01 AM -0700 10/6/97, Peter Trei wrote:
>The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf
>life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from
>other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which
>can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have
>the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the
>old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to
>remove the fission products.
I think this comment is in error. Plutonium has a half life on the order
of 250,000 years, so very little decay products would build up in 6 years.
The tritium used in thermonuclear weapons has a much shorter half life, and
would need to be replaced about that often.
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