Um...here's what I wrote in #58:
"Don't forget deuterium...and an order of magnitude more sophistication in detonation timing...plus the core fission bomb to generate enough heat to start the fusion reaction...and, just for color, try it in a fission-fusion-fission configuration by encasing it all in a U-238 shell so that the fusion reaction will saturate the U-238 with free neutrons, thus changing it to Plutonium which is then scattered across several miles."
Please point out where I said it became "part of the fission/fusion reaction." As I plainly stated, the resulting plutonium would be scattered. Doesn't say a thing about it being "part of the fission/fusion reaction."
Are we going to ping-pong this dialogue the whole day now? It was boring two messages ago.
Once again, the point is that there would be NO "resulting plutonium", because the reaction of "saturate the U-238 with free neutrons, thus changing it to Plutonium" NEVER OCCURRED. There was not enough time. You need days for the U-238 to Pu-239 reaction to occur and you've only got nanoseconds in that bomb.
--Boot Hill
My eyes glazed over far more than 2 messages ago. The one thing that I know for certain is that it would be a Bad Thing for the sand Nazis to get any amount of HEU.