7 ms·

Actually you get 32-Phosporous from that. If you want 36-Cl you need cosmic rays interacting with 36-Ar, 39-K, 40-Ca, or neutron activation of 35-Cl.

• mirimir 10y ago
  Doh. S-32 + n -> P-32 + p And then P-32 decays back to S-32 with ~14 day half-life. I wonder if people are working on this. It'd be a minor tweak to nuclear weapons models.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    The problem is that you're still going to end up with plenty of fallout from "unburned" Uranium and various byproducts. That pollution won't be especially associated with the S you want, but it's going to produced alongside it regardless.
    • mirimir 10y ago
      I was thinking of devices with ~100 tons sulfur each, lofted near the stratosphere in blimps. That yields persistent sulfur aerosols to decrease insolation. And yes, one challenge would be minimizing radionuclide production.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        I wonder if a slower, but maybe safer alternative is just to increase the burning of SOX producing fuels. If we could scrub the carbon, we'd have a net-cooling effect. That or we have to seriously consider induced volcanism.
      • mirimir 10y ago
        The problem is that ground-level SOX gives you acid rain, and washes out too fast to be useful for GCC mitigation. Increasing volcanism would arguably be even iffier than nuclear sulfur blimps.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        Good point about the acid rain, the washout. I wonder if there's some way to dope solid rocket booster fuel to produce SOX at higher altitudes? As we launch more and more, maybe we could harness that to ease the burden on something like your blimp idea... thus avoiding the need to nuke the planet.
        • mirimir 10y ago
          I was just riffing on the nuclear winter thing. But actually, blimps would be unworkable, because we would need to inject millions of tons of SOX per year into the stratosphere. And energy requirements are mostly for lifting, not dispersion. Perhaps nuclear devices could be designed to produce upward-directed jets.