Alex WellersteinVerified account

That' s awesome :) But which is more expensive to make: Uraniun or Plutonium? Plutoniun is get by irradiating Uranium in Fast reactor, by means of decay and chemical purity. In other words HEU requires more aparatus to bring it bot U233 and 235, both fissile.

Plutonium is more expensive. The Uranium enrichment process is simpler and easier than reactors plus isotope separation of Pu.

also just worth noting that if you have BOTH you can set up very efficient warheads — there can be a very economical "mix"

Composite cores ftw! Historical example would suggest DPRK prob doing them too?

Could a little amount of HEU ( about 1inch or less), in a boosted configuration be capable to produce fast neutrons making U238 undergoing fission? Is U238 explosion higher than U235, even Pu?

A sphere of HEU with a 1 inch diameter is only 0.16 kg... that feels like a strong "no" to me (a couple orders of magnitude smaller than smallest U235 cores I have heard of). U238 fissioning releases approx. same energy per gram of fissioning as U235 and Pu (~18 kt/kg).

If you're asking about 1 inch around a Pu core, I don't know how much that would help. It wouldn't be a good approach to a composite weapon (which usually use a little bit of Pu and a lot of HEU).

In terms of less active material than usual, i think only 1 inch of uranium could release less than 1kt but even 1kt means a huge damage if it was exploded by airdrop ( that would maximize damage around its target) Is that right?