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Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Weapons Discussion Board
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Subject: Life of a nuke
jhaley    6/30/2005 1:33:28 PM
What is the life of a nuke, how long before the nuke material degrades (half life) enough to render it unreliable....and what the hell is a "boost gas" fill?
 
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jlb    RE:Life of a nuke   7/21/2005 9:57:56 AM
As far as I understand it, the problem isn't so much atomic decay as chemical decay of the detonator's explosive. Getting a reasonnable yield out of a subcritical mass requires extremely fine control of where and when each bit of fissile material ends up. I would be surprised if all this radioactivity didn't also play hell with the electronics controlling the whole process and also with the radiation reflectors.
 
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patroclus    RE:Life of a nuke   7/21/2005 11:06:40 AM
Exactly correct. As for the rest, I suggest you GOOGLE "Ulam/Teller". It will tell you all you want to know about "dial a yield". Anything beyond that is not open source and you won't find it anywhere, nor should you want to. Patroclus
 
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jhaley    RE:Life of a nuke   7/21/2005 5:01:08 PM
The US recycles its Nukes after about 20 years... After 15years a nuke becomes more and more un-reliable. Not only is everything recycled, but the nuke material is reprocessed. I don't know what the recycled material is used for, but a large quantity of radio active gold (used in wiring) is in storage... If the half life of the material is between 70-250 thousand years, why does the material need to be reprocessed? How does that affect all the old nukes in Russian inventory? "Just a few thoughts"
 
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