Spike Jones wrote:
> > Spike Jones wrote: .... with a stroke of the pen, over half of the
> > > world's nuclear destuction potential was taken off line. the
> > > newspapers mentioned it in one paragraph on the bottom of page 19.
> >
> > Mike Lorrey wrote: Don't count your chickens...till Duma ratifies their end of the
> > treaty. Makes you wonder what the heck they were thinking..... assuming that they are
> > capable of that function. An overly generous assumption as far as I can see.
>
> mike i see that this issue is back in the news. the state department is
> scrambling to find a source of tritium. they are going with tennessee
> valley authority, a civilian facility. tritium has a half life of about 12
> yrs if i recall correctly, so it is a big job keeping those cores servicable.
> the commies must be having a hell of a time over there keeping
> their nukes on line, with all their other problems. maybe the whole thing
> will eventually be too expensive and they will just give up. peace will
> break out all over. its the end to the cold war everyone hoped
> for but no one really expected...
Yeah, just read another article that the Russian Rocket forces have brought on line their first new missile in 20 years. Its a single warhead missile apparently like our own unrealized "Midgetman", which is not limited by the START treaties (it only limits or bans multiple warhead missiles). Funny though, they tested 8 of them, and only the last one had a successful test flight, so they declared it online.... he he ...
Tritium isn't so bad, there's plenty of it around in our nation's nuke reactors, but there is no widely used system to filter and collect it. Originally this was purposeful to prevent knowledge of and access to the technology from spreading from Energy Dept reactors to the private sector, but now that so many Energy Dept reactors have been shut down, its become difficult to get. Privatization anyone?
Mike Lorrey