🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr1.212526.22947@ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:
>
>|	There was a study in the early 60s (I think) which put the 
>|cost of a cobalt-clad Very Large H-Bomb (VL being big enough that the
>|rather nasty fallout you get from cladding the Device in cobalt would
>|be enough to eventually sterilise the Earth*) at around 100 billion current
>|US dollars. Kahn talks about it one of his books on the subject. I
>|think in either 'On Thermonuclear War' or 'Thinking About the Unthinkable'.
>
>The purpose of cladding it in cobalt being to disperse cobalt
>isotopes?

	Yes, although it occurs to me that the cladding might not be
cobalt but whatever one bombards to get cobalt 60. I don't have my 
CRC handy .... 

	I don't know how exhaustively they looked at the choice of isotopes
to enrich the fallout with, either. I imagine you need something with a long
enough half-life to last long enough to be dispersed around the globe and
short enough to emit significant amounts of radiation in ashort time. It
helps if the fallout radioisotopes are chemically similar to elements normally
used in the human body, too. Nothing like getting right into the cell structure
to increase the chance of radiactive breakdown causing significant damage to
an organism. This destroying life as we know it stuff looks to be complicated...

								James Nicoll