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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (124879)	2/20/2004 10:37:11 PM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<<Interesting. I've never thought about this stuff. So there is a natural upper limit to a suitcase bomb! It would need to be above critical mass so that gives a lower limit, minimum size, weight etc. But 20 megaton monster ones would require a great deal of cooling, if they were to be stored in a ready to go form on top of an ICBM or in a B52.>>> So if a suitcase is hot to the touch, or has a running fan inside then the passenger should turned away from the airline gate ? Neat. Sig

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (124879)	2/22/2004 1:05:17 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Maurice Winn; Re: "Interesting. I've never thought about this stuff. So there is a natural upper limit to a suitcase bomb! It would need to be above critical mass so that gives a lower limit, minimum size, weight etc. But 20 megaton monster ones would require a great deal of cooling, if they were to be stored in a ready to go form on top of an ICBM or in a B52." No, my calculation was to find out how much heat a bomb that decayed in a few decades would give out. In fact, as I showed earlier, bombs don't decay nearly that quickly. So there is not much of a heating problem. This does get back to the subject of plutonium. It turns out that the preferred variety of plutonium for bombs is the type that is less radioactive. The type that is more radioactive is difficult to make supercritical because it makes so many neutrons that it begins to blow up too early. -- Carl