🚀 go-pugleaf

Dwayne Allen Day (wayneday@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) wrote:
: Fraering Philip G (pgf9240@ucs.usl.edu) wrote:
: : In spite of a lot of official denial by U.S. officials that it couldn't
: : be, South Africa had the bomb. Details are fishy about where they tested
: : it, although you can rest assured that the NSF panel that studied those
: : suspicious Vela burst detections in the South Indian Ocean wasn't biased.
: : (wink, wink...).

: They apparently didn't test it.  The physics are so basic that you don't 
: necessarily need to detonate one to be confident that it will detonate.  
: The South Africans have released enough information about their bomb 
: program voluntarily to make it hard to believe that they would be 
: concealing this minor detail (really, the big issue is whether they had 
: it or not, what's to be gained by denying a test?).

I think they had a 'zero energy' test. In other words they fired the
chemical detonators with enough fissile material to start a chain
reaction, and measure its effects, but not enough to sustain the reaction
to generate a nuclear explosion.

(del)

--
Dave Stephenson                   
Geological Survey of Canada            * 99% of Usenet Postings are
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada                * noise. This is my 
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