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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Internal surveillance | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | helped make the USSR the | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | nation it is today. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA