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From: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Small Nuclear Bombs
Message-ID: <13721@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 9-May-86 22:17:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.13721
Posted: Fri May  9 22:17:24 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 14-May-86 01:38:11 EDT
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Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.UUCP (Gene Ward Smith)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <346@dg_rtp.UUCP> throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:

>> From: rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard)

>> Reguarding plutonium vs. water vapor risks, remember that it
>> only takes a few ounces of plutonium to trigger the fusion bomb.

>Ounces, schmounces.  Even the smallest thermonuclear weapon needs
>several *pounds* (not ounces) of plutonium to trigger fusion.  And most

>> Some tactical weapons (the very small ones) are very small, only 1 or
>> 2 Kilotons, enough to level a shopping center or (more likely)
>> an airport.  Their main advantage is that they are about the size
>> of a ping-pong ball and are therefore easy to deliver but hard
>> to shoot down.

>Holy Shit!  Excuse my french, but what planet did the bomb designer come
>from anyhow?  "Size of a ping-pong ball?" Just a supercritical mass of
>plutonium itself is about the size of a softball (or maybe a baseball,
>if a real genius of a designer is at work, maybe).  And that doesn't
>include the hardware to detonate it, nor space to keep it subcritical
>until use. Granted, tactical nukes can be the size, say, of a
>toaster.... but a *ping* *pong* *ball*?  Get real.  Maybe you haven't


    I was talking to an ex-LLL physicist once who told me that there 
is an isotope of Californium with a *very small* critical mass (a few
grams, I think it was). This opened the theoretical possibility of a
hand grenade sized nuclear weapon.


ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
        Fifty flippant frogs / Walked by on flippered feet
    And with their slime they made the time / Unnaturally fleet.