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From: smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Shielding Nukes
Keywords: not much help
Message-ID: <8662@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 28 Jul 89 02:55:28 GMT
References: <8530@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)

In article <8530@cbnews.ATT.COM>, arf@chinet.chi.il.us (Jack Schmidling) writes:
> Watches with illuminous dials are not reactors either but lots of women died  
> very horrible deaths from painting the dials.  Frankly, I wouldn't sleep with  
> a watch, much less a nuke. 

We're getting a bit far afield here, but...

Comparing the hazards from painting watch dials to being near a nuclear
weapon is like comparing apples and oranges.  First, the watch dials were
painted with radium, not plutonium, U-235, or tritium, the major
radioactive substances in today's bombs.  (Actually, I don't think
U-235 is used anymore, since it's not suitable for implosion detonation.)
There is also a very small amount of something else as a neutron
source; I don't know what's used today.

Second, the women did not die just from painting the dials -- though
that might have been sufficient -- rather, they were taught to twirl
the tip of the brush in their mouths to produce a nice fine point.
They were *ingesting* radium, in other words.

You may be right about the risks from being too near nuclear weapons --
I don't know; I've never been that intimate with one -- but I'd like
to see some hard data, rather than analogies.

As long as I'm being technical, an earlier poster spoke of how cold
space is.  Space, being a vacuum, has no temperature; only objects
in space do.  In many satellites -- and certainly in something like
the shuttle or a space station -- the major problem is getting rid
of excess heat, not in staying warm.  A satellite containing a
nuclear weapon may show up as warmer than other satellites of the
same size and power consumption, but that's not at all the same thing.


		--Steve Bellovin