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Comment on "there is little incentive not to use it"

Having talked about this same questiom with a family member who was in the field of nuclear engineering, what he told me basically boiled down to this:

It is fairly accurate, but not actually as detailed as it seems. There are several major obstacles that variously will stump you, get you killed, and/or put you on the radar of a national security apparatus.

But yeah, although not exactly “easy,” the basics apparently aren’t that complicated to work out if you know the science.

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Technus@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I actually wonder how much in the article is actually deliberate misinformation meant to trip up anyone trying to build their own device.

For example, this bit caught my attention:

In modern weapons, the neutron generator is a high-voltage vacuum tube containing a particle accelerator which bombards a deuterium/tritium-metal hydride target with deuterium and tritium ions. The resulting small-scale fusion produces neutrons at a protected location outside the physics package, from which they penetrate the pit.

That seems really finicky to me.

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- BakerBagel@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It is finicky. That’s why only a handful of countries have actually managed to create their own thermonuclear warheads. It’s more about being able to build the needed infrastructure and acquire the source material than understanding the physics.
  
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- skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  this makes sense if you consider timescales involved
  
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skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
there’s about zero public information about interstage for example

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