Word: tritium
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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...
...Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that contains two neutrons and a proton in its nucleus, occurs naturally in minute quantities in raindrops and groundwater. But the radioactive gas took on strategic importance in 1952, when the U.S. exploded its first hydrogen bomb. That explosion demonstrated the destructive force that can be released when tritium fuses with deuterium, another hydrogen isotope, to yield helium and a burst of nuclear energy. Today, tritium is used both to enhance the power of atom bombs and in the trigger mechanism of the far more destructive H-bomb. Because it decays at the rate...
Until recently, it was the problem of tritium replenishment that concerned most nuclear experts. Last year the DOE was forced to shut down its only source of tritium, the aging Savannah River nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina, when the reactors there developed cracks and other safety problems. The risk that the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal might soon run out of gas provoked long and acrimonious debates in Congress. In the midst of that controversy word came that the DOE had been making millions of dollars a year by selling surplus tritium overseas. Some of the gas, it was revealed...
...tritium in question followed a circuitous route that began at the Savannah River weapons plant. The vast majority of the plant's tritium output ; was purified and stored for use in nuclear warheads. But some 300 grams (10.5 oz.) a year was sent to Oak Ridge, where it was packaged in uranium sponge and sold for commercial use -- primarily as a radioactive marker in biological research or as a source of light in everything from airport runways to luminous watch dials. The apparent losses were discovered when customers complained of discrepancies between the amount of tritium ostensibly exported...