Nuclear Weapons Material

[Ed Carp [Sysadmin]]

> > > the atomic weapon that sets off the fusion reaction.)
> > 
> > I don't understand your point.  The earliest devices used a pie shape 
> > with a wedge cut out.  The actual geometry is rather unimportant to 
> > getting a fission reaction - but it *is* important if you want to 
> > maximize your yield.
> > -- 
> 
> 	Wrong. If you are using a uranium fuelled bomb, then you are
> right. As long as you thump together two barely sub-critical masses, it
> will go boom. However, if you try this with plutonium, it will fizzle.
> In the time that it takes for a standard gun type triggering mechanism
> to operate, the plutonium will become critical, and then release most of
> it's energy harmlessly, instead of going super-critical. This is the
> reason for using fast-triggering bomb geometries.

Wrong.  If you will notice, I said "the earliest devices".  They didn't 
use plutonium for nuclear devices until much later.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp at linux.org, ecarp at netcom.com
Finger ecarp at netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744 at anon.penet.fi
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"