The Real Deal on Nukes

Friends,

Being an ex-nuclear weapons tech, I enjoy reading threads on nuclear weapons. There's been a lot of talk of tritium at the moment. I hope this link will help shed some light on the subject...

www.designation-systems.net...

Look under the Lance and Pershing II missile sytems(which my unit maintained and ultimately dismantled in 1992). You will notice that warheads contained a system for ER, or enhanced radiation. This was also known as the neutron bomb. The purpose was to cause maximum damage to enemy troops, while causing minimum property damage. This is the purpose of tritium in a nuclear warhead. It does not effect the yield of detonation; it does not make the nuke a "superbomb" that can knock asteroids out of the sky.

These weapon systems, The Lance, Pershing II, the M454, and others were dismantled in 1992, under civilian and Russian inspectors.


That is what tritium is used for in nuclear weapons.

Have a great day!!!

Little did you know..

Theres are nuclear weapons that have tritium to boost it yield..

These weapons have little of it..

And then theres neoutron bombs, that need a shyte load of stiff stuff..

(Much more than boosted weapons..)

Vanunu also claimed that Israel possessed fusion boosted weapons, and has developed hydrogen bomb technology. He provided information about both lithium-6 and tritium production. He stated that initially tritium was produced by a facility in Machon 2 called Unit 92 by separating it from the heavy water moderator where it is produced in small amounts as a by-product. In 1984 production was expanded when a new facility called Unit 93 was opened to extract tritium from enriched lithium that had been irradiated in the reactor. The large scale production of tritium by Israel has been confirmed by South Africa, which received a shipments of tritium totalling 30 g during 1977-79. This clearly indicates tritium production on a scale sufficient for a weapon boosting program. It is difficult to find any other rationale for such a large tritium production capability except some sort of thermonuclear weapon application.



So actually at least 3 types of nuclear weapons have this..

Thermo-nuclear, fusion boosted and neutron bombs..

Link!

4.3.1 Fusion Boosted Fission Weapons

Fusion boosting is a technique for increasing the efficiency of a small light weight fission bomb by introducing a modest amount of deuterium- tritium mixture (typically containing 2-3 g of tritium) inside the fission core. As the fission chain reaction proceeds and the core temperature rises at some point the fusion reaction begins to occur at a significant rate. This reaction injects fusion neutrons into the core, causing the neutron population to rise faster than it would from fission alone (that is, the effective value of alpha increases).



Now you may have worked with so types of these weapons..

I havent, but that still dont mean that i wouldnt be right..

I tend to be right when it comes to weapons..

For one reason or for another..



Fusion boosting can also be used in gun-type weapons. The South Africans considered adding it to their fission bombs, which would have increased yield five-fold (from 20 kt to 100 kt). Since implosion does not occur in gun devices, it cannot contribute to fusion fuel compression. Instead some sort of piston arrangement might be used in which the kinetic energy of the bullet is harnessed by striking a static capsule.

Well ok, my 10-20x seems to be bit too high, but 5x is also quite much..

Yes, you probably are right, Fulcrum. I am not doubting you .

I just know about the systems we worked on.

All US Nuclear Weapons are "fusion boosted" in one way or another. The fission reaction triggers a fusion reaction in any nuclear weapon, even if it is very small and not useful.

The method you are referring to which is deuterium and tritium fusion reaction triggered by fission is not practical...remember the US hasn't produced tritium since 1988.

Some are working on a pure fusion or cold fusion bomb made with tritium and deuterium, which means no fission reaction is used to trigger the fusion, and this would be much more powerful. But we don't have the technology for this quite yet...or so they say.

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by Shoktek]