Re: Fun with (In)Security

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:42:29 CST, Paul Schmehl said:
> That's probably true.  The major problem that has to be overcome is weight.

Right, but not for the reasons you think...  The actual critical mass is on on
the order of several kilograms of plutonium, and not much more for U-235. The
difficult part is in making sure that when the pieces of the core collide and
it goes critical, it *stays* critical long enough to get a bang rather than a
fizzle.

> The radioactive material has to be encased in lead. 

Oh? Why?  Remember that it's not *that* radioactive - a few pounds of shielding
in the right places will do wonders.  How *else* do they make a tactical nuke
that's small enough to be placed on a smallish surface-to-surface missle?
Those things don't have more than a few hundred pounds of payload.  Sure, the
nuke is a little bitty one that only pops a few kilotons - but look where that
got some cities in Japan.....

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