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Jeremy Thomson
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- TL;DR Summary
- Would tritium glow in the dark paint increase the yield of a backpack nuke?
"Glow in the dark paint was applied to the lock, so a soldier could unlock the miniature bomb in the dark".
I'm thinking that its unlikely 'glow in the dark paint' would be tritium based. More likely radium, which was used up to WWII for instrument dials etc. But I don't know. Backpack nukes are inefficient dial-a-yield devices that probably mess with the detonation sequence of the implosion to reduce yield. Having a bunch of fusion neutrons from tritium 'paint' would certainly increase yield, a little or a lot I don't know. Having tritium on the outside of the casing would limit the fusion effect, a thousandfold? Tritium boosting in the core might double the yield of a 20kt device to 40kt, basically giving you an extra 20kt. A thousand times less is 20 ton, if the backpack was dialled down to 10 ton yield but got an unexpected 20 ton fusion neutron boost, people might be surprised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition_(SADM).webm
Jeremy Thomson