russia_1.html

[Bill Frantz]

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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