Veteran of the Third Battle of Tannhauser Gate.
Joined:
Dec 2005
Posts:
87160
EE: 100% (6)
ID, USA
Posted: 6/28/2026 10:17:18 AM EDT
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The book, not the movie. The plot involves a multi-stage H-bomb created from a nuclear core salvaged from an aircraft which crashed during the Israeli 7 day war. In a short chapter called 3 Shakes*, Clancy describes how the 3rd stage is accidentally sabotaged by polluted hydrogen; the final output was halved, then halved again, by this polluted hydrogen which acted as a damper. Nevertheless there was a huge bada-boom. How accurate is this description? Clancy stated in the forward to the book that he deliberately changed some of the data in the book, "not that it would really make any difference- everything is in the public domain." *the very short time a nuclear explosion takes place. |
87% of the time, any question starting with "Why..." is answered with "Money."
I am so tempted to lay down the melancholy burden of sanity...
"...and if you can't wait for dawn you can always light a fire."
I am so tempted to lay down the melancholy burden of sanity...
"...and if you can't wait for dawn you can always light a fire."
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not sure if this is a DIY thing. fusion reaction uses the energy from an atomic bomb (fission) to push hydrogen together to form helium. the energy from that is the fusion bomb part. the energy release will be proportional to the amount of hydrogen fused. I can see it coming up short if heavier elements are introduced and the amount is done by weight/molarity. so the reaction would be smaller because instead of (making this up) 100 ppm of hydrogen, it was say 50 ppm and the other 50 ppm was something that couldn't be fused. so it would be halved. I don't know if the specific material would cause it to be halved again. I am not versed in fusion vs fission. I know in fission, if you have some sort of neutron absorber, you could reduce the output, but not sure if there is an equivalent for fusion. |
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Your night sights that use tritium get dimmer over time because the stuff degrades over time and their service life is limited by this. The half-life for tritium is about 12 years. Because they still contain a radioactive element the manufacturers would like us to return these old sights to them for recovery of the tritium. They filter out the helium-3 and reuse it. In the book they use tritium that has been stored for a long time and they left off this step by accident resulting in a much less powerful explosion because Helium -3 will dampen the explosion. That's called a "fizzle" when it occurs unexpectedly. Some of our current weapons still use tritium. They are called boosted fission devices or sometimes referred to "dial-a-yield" because they can set the amount of tritium used for a little bigger bang to a bigger bang by the amount used. and they require regular maintenance. Two or three stage thermonuclear weapons are something different and produce much bigger results. Imagine that. |