On May 1, 2014, at 4:23 PM, Anthony Jackson <ajackson@iii.com> wrote:

> From: Kurt Feltenberger
>>
>> With the resources of a solar system similar to ours, how many nuclear
>> weapons would it be possible to construct?
>
> Well, the molar abundance of Uranium is about 1/10^12 that of hydrogen for a mass abundance that is somewhere around 1/10^10, most of it can in principle be processed into bombs via breeder reactors, the mass of the solar system is around 2e+30 kg, so there's around 10^20 kg of uranium that can be processed into Pu-239 and around 10^18 kg of U-235. Critical mass is 52 kg of U-235 or 10 kg of Pu-239, which can be reduced somewhat by compression, so figure a lower theoretical limit of around 10^19 nuclear weapons.
>
> Of course, much of that is totally inaccessible. The fraction of U in asteroids and planetary crusts will be on the order of 1/10^8, the mass of the asteroid belt is maybe 10^20 kg, so asteroid mining might only allow building on the order of 10^11 weapons.
>
> In any case, it's high enough to probably be a nonfactor; it's mostly an issue of 'how much money are you willing to spend

Of course, given the fine control over nuclear forces and fusion implied by the descriptions of Traveller technology, you can just make the stuff, in whatever quantities you want; but ssssshhhhh we won’t talk of that...

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs