On Mon, Oct 3, 2022 at 12:07 AM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> 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> ezi > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2-T0L45hnVksEWevP7NdM3OS3W2K5X4yR1gAiEr%2BDBpQ%40mail.gmail.com.
