7 ms·

> plutonium part will work absolutely fine. Plutonium pits need to be constantly rebuilt. Plutonium is one of the most corrosive materials on earth and phase c

• credit_guy 3y ago
  That's not quite true. Plutonium is definitely not one of the most corrosive materials. It does have some peculiarities [1]. But they are not that relevant for plutonium pits, and the 7 stable phases are not that relevant either. Plutonium pits are made of an alloy of plutonium and gallium, which makes plutonium take the delta phase, and it makes it about 20 times more stable than unalloyed plutonium. Is it perfectly stable in this form? No, because plutonium decays, so after decades things can happen. But after how many decades? People don't know for sure, but it's many decades. The US decided to start rebuilding 30 pits per year from 2026 on and 80 from 2030. At more than 5000 nukes in the inventory, each pit would be rebuilt after more than six decades. Keep in mind that right now we are not doing that at all, and haven't been doing it for about 3 decades. Bottom line, Russia's plutonium weapons are fine (unfortunately). [1] https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00818031.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00818031.pdf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_alloy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo... [3] https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/ https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-sci...