[WyldKard]

I don't think a 1kt fission bomb needs any tritium enhancement. I could be wrong about that, but I think they are simple "gun" type bombs. High explosive drives one half of the critical mass into the other half, at the end of a tube.

Suitcase nukes are "fractional crit" devices. You CAN, on occasion, get a supercrtical mass out of them without Tritium, but more often than not, the reaction will be a dud. Tritium is a high neutron flux catalyst, and would definately kickstart a sub-crtical mass into a chain reaction. Of course, it decays out into Helium-3, which is a neutron sink...which is why you have to swap it out every few weeks. Doesn't take much He3 to poison a chain reaction, or so I am led to believe.

[Zorobabel]

You could be right, in which case these weapons would be highly unpracticle for use by a terrorist organization. Tritium is not an element that you can get at your local NukesRus outlet. I wonder how they did it with those nuclear artillary shells?

[Stefan Stackhouse]

Of course, it decays out into Helium-3, which is a neutron sink...which is why you have to swap it out every few weeks. Doesn't take much He3 to poison a chain reaction, or so I am led to believe.

Not so frequently as every few weeks, but every few years, yes. Half life is around 10 years or so. I don't believe that they don't need to recharge the SLBMs while they are at sea for months at a time, for example.

If the story implies that these were obtained by OBL no later than 1998, then they might possibly need a recharge by now. My guess is that they had not been recharged for many years when OBL bought them -- those who sold them to him knew that they would be duds. If OBL has procured some relatively fresh tritium within the past 2-3 years, we are in deep danger.