3 ms·

Here a nice thing of nuclear warhead maintenance/decommisioning of nuclear warhead. The article discuss mostly about the plutonium cores, but modern weapons use

Here a nice thing of nuclear warhead maintenance/decommisioning of nuclear warhead. The article discuss mostly about the plutonium cores, but modern weapons uses triutium to boost the yield, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon. Tritium is faintly radioactive, and it decays over time in the stable helium-3. This is a quite rare isotope of helium, in comparison to the much abundant He4. He3 is much needed in dilition refrigerators, the big machines often seen in advestisment of quantum computer. So such activities on nuclear weapons are the source of a critical and scarce ingredient for quantum computing!

pencilguin 4y ago
Likewise, for fusion experiments. I see assertions in planning documents that the supply of tritium on hand is wholly inadequate for planned research operations on ITER, never mind its successor imagined to be built in such a way as to be able to drive a steam turbine, or likewise SPARC or its imagined successor. I.e. there is not enough for either program, never mind both. And Helion's D-3He reactor would need lots of 3He, and be utterly dependent on making more, itself. It takes 12 years for half of your stock of tritium to spontaneously become the needed 3He, and no possibility of hurrying it along.