Nuclear Weapons Material
Paul J. Ste. Marie
pstemari at bismark.cbis.com
Tue Aug 23 05:45:44 PDT 1994
> 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.
The "trigger" isn't tritium. Tritium (along with lithium 6) is used
in fusion bombs. A fission-only device, ala Hiroshima or Nagasaki,
doesn't require any.
The trigger in the center of the plutonium core is a neutron source,
polonium if memory serves correctly. Tritium is a beta emitter.
--Paul
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