Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!news.cs.indiana.edu!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: MEDELMA@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU (Michael Edelman) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Nuclear Triggers Message-ID: <1990Dec12.032131.11391@cbnews.att.com> Date: 12 Dec 90 03:21:31 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 15 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Michael Edelman Regarding the construction of early nuclear triggers: One of the books on the subject- McPhee's, I believe- describes the trigger as a small steel ball with holes drilled, filled with polonium and beryllium, and plugged. Implosion deformed the ball (actually a ball bearing, I believe) and produced mixing. That's for the implosion bomb. As for the difficulty of generating 25KV from batteries, it's trivial. You only need a battery and an inverter circuit, available off the shelf in an encapsulated package. The terminal you're staring at may well have a similar circuit in a different package. It's simply a DC-powered oscillator run through a step-up transformer and a voltage multiplier circuit. --mike edelman medelma@cms.cc.wayne.edu medelma@waynest1