[calenel]

"They have a rather short shelf life if not continually maintained."

I see people claiming this, but I have yet to see anyone provide support for the claim. Missiles, yes, the fuel system (potentially) requires maintenance. Warheads? Aside from the fissionable materials, the rest of a nuke is readily maintained especially if you don't care about the tricky timing mechanisms, targeting hardware, sensors, or anything other than the bang.

Plutonium (Pu239) has a half-life of about 24,000 years, so a cold war era warhead will have lost about .05 % of its potential bang.

And the amount of plutonium required is quite easily carried by a single person (I won't actually mention the quantity, but the information is easily obtained on the web). Plutonium is an alpha emitter, and alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Minimal shielding would be required. Besides, if you are planning to die for the cause, what difference does it make if it is by cancer or nuclear detonation? Plutonium gets really dangerous only when inhaled or ingested.

I'd really like to see some supporting evidence that nukes have short shelf lives, because my experience leads me to conclude otherwise.

[freebird5850]

I've read that suitcase style bombs go bad because the emitted radiation destroys the electronics over time.

[The Red Zone]

These tiny nukes use tritium. The half life is a few years.

[Southack]

"They have a rather short shelf life if not continually maintained."
"I see people claiming this, but I have yet to see anyone provide support for the claim." - calenel

Look up the half-life of Polonium, a material that does not exist in nature (can only be made in nuclear reactors and cyclotrons).

Beryllium trigger isotopes can have as little as a 53 day half-life, for instance. Polonium 210, a Man-made isotope that can *only* be created in nuclear reactors or cyclotrons, has a 140 day half-life.

This is simple physics. Moreover, heavy metals like uranium and plutonium are among the most brittle materials known to man, and the slightest bit of humidity turns them into uranium oxide or plutonium oxide (i.e. worthless rust).