Word: tritium
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Once disassembly is complete, the real question arises. What to do with the leftover radioactive material from the bombs? When nuclear weapons were a growth industry, their parts could be recycled into new nukes. Now, however, the most readily reusable weapons ingredient is tritium, a radioactive gas used in some warheads to increase the power of the nuclear reaction. Tritium decays rapidly, so existing bombs must be periodically replenished. This tritium windfall may even keep the Department of Energy from reactivating the accident-prone Savannah River plant near Aiken, S.C., where the gas is manufactured...
...design began to fall apart shortly after Truman launched his H-bomb program. Teller's idea had been to use the heat of a conventional A-bomb to ignite a separate H-bomb. But Ulam, a brilliant mathematician, made a series of calculations that showed that the amount of tritium fuel required for Teller's bomb was prohibitive and that even when sparked by an A-bomb, it would probably not achieve fusion...