[ExI] cost of SBSP and thorium

[Charlie Stross]

On 20 Aug 2012, at 17:48, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Modern H-bombs may use a very small about of tritium in their neutron
> initiators but the vast majority is bred in a very small fraction of a
> second from Lithium Deuteride. It was originally thought that only the rare
> isotope Lithium-6 would work for this purpose but it was later found that
> the common isotope Lithium-7 would work almost as well. That's why the
> first H-bomb test that used Lithium Deuteride, the Castle Bravo test in
> 1954, was expected to produce a blast of 4 megatons but ended up producing
> 15, it killed several Japanese fishermen who were well outside the official
> danger area.

If that's the crew of the "Lucky Dragon", weren't they caught in the fallout plume rather than directly killed by the heat flash/blast/prompt radiation?


-- Charlie