On 10/3/2022 4:11 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
On Monday, October 3, 2022 at 5:02:56 AM UTC-5 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Oct 3, 2022 at 12:07 AM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com>
wrote:
/> Yes that's one way it could go bad. But there's also the
case that they literally don't work. /
Unfortunately I think there is little chance that Russian H-bombs
won't explode because it's not that difficult to maintain them;
Plutonium 239 has a halflife of 24,000 years, U235 has a half life
of over 700 million years, and lithium-6 deuteride is stable. It's
true that modern H-bombs also have a very small amount of the
hydrogen isotope tritium and it's half life is only 12 years but
it will explode without tritium just with a somewhat reduced
yield, and the chemical explosive used to initiate the implosion
could become unstable after a few decades and would need to be
replaced with fresh explosives, but I have a hunch if there is
anything in Russia that is well-maintained it is their nuclear
bombs. And since Ukraine is right on the Russian border a delivery
system for such bombs is not really an issue.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
Plutonium pits have to be cycled every few years, where after 10 years
their effectiveness is very reduced. It is not because the nuclei of
plutonium has decayed, but the crystalline structure of the plutonium
is not longer the optimal allotrope. The implosive collapse of the pit
is not as effective at starting a fission chain reaction. There is a
duty cycle on the plutonium that has to be remelted and
metallurgically reconfigured.
And could a general skim off the money intended for this recycling and
become very rich?
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0db03b36-97b7-1217-5c7c-c6237ce45f5d%40gmail.com.
