On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 03:29 PM, Karsten M. Self wrote:
- Credible military weapons have minimum requirements of both efficacy -- efficient use of supercritical energy -- and predictability -- having the damned thing go off in the silo / bunker / hanger / munitions dump rather than the chosen target isn't particularly useful.
Tighter constraints => Longer fulfillment time.
The original US project, as described by Feynman, involved much radiation exposure and high risks of criticality incidents at Oak Ridge, some of which are documented in his biographical essay collections.
I knew Feynman (*) and I knew the main survivor or the criticality accident at Los Alamos. (Klein, who survived "ticking the dragon's tail" and had annual tests done for the rest of his life, which just ended a couple of years ago.) You are overstating the "high risks of criticality incidents," I think strongly. (* This should mean something to you: we had him over for dinner at our place on Camino del Sur, I.V.) Feynman wasn't even involved in that end of the physics. A couple of deaths happened, which is hardly surprising given the speed and magnitude of the war effort. More Americans died when a particular truck hit a land mine. More Americans probably died in Los Alamos when their trucks ran off the roads into the ravines. Get some perspective.
The Hanford reservation is still a glowing waste zone, much of which greatly postdates a fairly deep understanding of radiation hazards.
Peace.
Fuck your "Peace" bullshit. You are spouting nonsense with your "glowing waste zone" idiocy. I lived west of the Hanford plant for a few years and had occasion to measure the radioactivity levels of samples. The ash from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens was hotter than all but a very few small pockets of soil in the Tri-City Area. You should cut down on the bullshitting. Everytime I glance --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley