🚀 go-pugleaf

matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:

>Now that the government is finally revealing some information about
>H-bomb construction, I'm curious: Does anyone out there happen to know
>how close what _Progressive_ said is to what the government is now
>saying?

A couple of years ago I took a class on the strategic arms race
at William and Mary that used a textbook which, I think, drew
heavily on the _Progressive_ article.  The book's description was
somewhat different from the one just quoted-- lithium was described
as being the source of tritium; the lithium deuteride was in
a cylindrical shape with the fission trigger at one end, and was
compressed axially by an ablator (which the book said was probably
styrofoam), with a jacket of "high-Z material" like U-238 on the 
outside.  Removing the jacket was purported to yield a neutron bomb,
with a smaller detonation but huge emission of neutrons.
-- 
Matt McIrvin, posting nonsense again