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Mark Terka says:

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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 = -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLlsSZesZNYlu+zuBAQHbxAP9HEFBKAyEgCGFdazub6WlGoqa9Kn/dX+1 LiwwNFA5i+ripKd9MaQbDBCqJOSNyy5Pj/4O7H8K0SBasWVkwzWNrmQ2tShnrFkm tDk9rsyhzbWKVNcJUxbpz/zlmuxtIAx8MYMW3LueqWCNDESUKQA46DWZ0owe8P1g JLHNADQgVHs= =eUAH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----