Word: lithium
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...detonator, but some guessers believe that a small amount of tritium in the main charge is needed to promote the reaction. It will tend to re-create itself, acting like a chemical catalyst. Other guessers think that free neutrons from the detonator will create enough tritium (by combining with lithium six) to keep the reaction going at full speed...
...even be possible to get along with no tritium in the detonator. A highly efficient fusion bomb may raise the temperature high enough to ignite the lithium hydride. Or perhaps it may, by "implosion." cause the fusion of a core made of deuterium alone...
...nuclear energy has arrived. Every fission bomb in the world's stockpiles can then be upgraded into an H-bomb, with hundreds or thousands of times its original power. They will have to be reworked slightly and surrounded by a reasonable amount of lithium-six deuteride...
This task should be no strain on any bomb-possessing nation. Lithium is abundant, and its L16 isotope (7.9% of the total) is not hard to separate. Deuterium is found in nature as about 1/5,000 of the hydrogen in water. As nuclear prices go, it is cheap and easy to obtain. Measured by its explosive effect, lithium-six deuteride is cheap indeed. One pound, if all of it reacts, has the explosive effect of 23,000 tons of TNT. Any desired amount can be used in a single bomb. Twenty-two tons of it, efficiently fired, would be equivalent...
Unlike plutonium bombs, whose fission products are naturally radioactive, a lithium-six deuteride bomb is only a moderate producer of radioactive contamination. Its end product, helium, is not radioactive at all. The detonator yields the normal products of fission, but they are no worse than those of an old-style atom bomb. Side reactions may produce radioactive isotopes, but they can be minimized. Apparently, they were minimized effectively in the H-bomb that exploded in the Marshall Islands on March...