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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (124857)	2/20/2004 2:44:21 PM
From: FaultLine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Dolinar Janko, I hope we dont get raised brows from Ken for spending the bandwith on the subject No problem. I think this interesting discussion sheds light on the difficulties faced by atomic weapons managers/handlers/thieves... --fl

To: smolejv@gmx.net who wrote (124857)	2/20/2004 6:58:47 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Dolinar Janko; Re: "Half-life of a given element does not change." No argument here, it's just a matter of what is meant by the word "half-life". Call it whatever you like, it is the case that the uranium in a weapon decays faster than uranium in its (usual) natural state. Re: "Huh? One natural decay produces 0.9 additional (due to thermalisation or whatever). Were it >9< additional, whew." The 9 is the result of adding up the infinite series. (Note that I'm glossing over a bit of probability here, but the result is accurate.) If the first neutron is able to produce another neutron 0.9 of the time, then the second neutron will also produce another neutron 0.9 of the time. The probabilty for the second electron is therefore 0.81 which is the product of the probabilities. And the second electron might kick out another as well. In total, the average initial neutron produces 0.9 + 0.9^2 + 0.9^3 + ... = 9 neutrons. The formula I gave is just the standard formula for the above infinite series. Note that it goes nuts as the neutron multiplication ratio goes to 1. That's criticality. -- Carl