Again this is from FR'er SouthTrack -
Suitcase nukes are SMALLER than ordinary nukes. The smaller the nuke, the shorter the shelf life.
The less shielding that you have, the sooner that your electronics and conventional explosives deteriorate from the radiation.
The less fissionable material that you have, the faster you generally need your atomic trigger isotopes to emit neutrons. The faster you emit neutrons, the shorter your half-life. The shorter your half-life, the less time that you have before the nuke simply fizzles instead of booms. 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).
So a "suitcase nuke" from 1991 (the fall of the CCCP) is likely little more than a rusted, shattered, fragmented collection of wiring and explosives today.
They *require* a constant, highly professional level of maintenance that needs to be performed in very, very highly advanced clean room labs.
No maintenance means no Boom.
Are these technological points? Loose lips and all? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that.
And aside from SouthTrack's (there is no Freeper SouthTrack, did you mean SoutHack?) credentials being unknown to me, I have already agreed with all the stuff you posted from him with one exception (quibble, really) noted below. Perhaps you should read through this thread again when you find the time.
For the forty-sixth time now, we aren't talking about suitcase nukes. We are talking about any kind of nuke being brought into the US in part or in whole. I never saw the big banner saying this thread was limited to the "DISCUSSION OF SUITCASE NUKES ONLY!" Sorry.
Southack (presumptively): The smaller the nuke, the shorter the shelf life.
Disagree. Size reduction (or increase) that requires a technology shift may affect shelf life, but different size (yield) nukes using substantially the same technology will have essentially the same shelf life. In the case of suitcase nukes the effect is negative in that they require regular maintenance and, as noted, the reduced shielding allows the electronics and other components to degrade at a substantial rate. As an interesting note, at least some designs for weapons using tritium (since some people can't seem to get past the tritium thing) for fission-boosting have an exchangeable reservoir for easy replenishment, although this feature may have been sacrificed in the suitcase models.