RE: Tritium in old nuclear weapons

[Michael McNaughton <mcnaught@lanl.gov>]

Richard Rhodes' book "Dark Sun" discusses this. When tritium fuses with
deuterium, it releases 14 MeV plus a neutron. If this neutron causes a
U-238 nucleus to fission, it releases almost 200 MeV. The latter is more
important.

At 08:35 AM 2/23/00 -0600, you wrote:
>I was under the impression that the tritium supplied the fuel for the fusion
>reaction which boosted the overall yield of the weapon and the fission
>reaction provided the conditions (heat and pressure) necessary to initiate
>the fusion reaction.

Mike McNaughton
email: mcnaught@LANL.gov or mcnaughton@LANL.gov
phone: (505)667-6130
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