Does the U.S. make weapons-grade U235 anymore except for research? I thought gun... | Hacker News

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		harshreality on July 23, 2024 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; r... Does the U.S. make weapons-grade U235 anymore except for research? I thought gun-type fission weapons were phased out for safety and efficiency reasons. I also thought essentially all "fission" weapons today are fusion-boosted, and I thought the implosion type was the only production-ready design of fusion-boosted weapons.

GemesAS on July 23, 2024 [–]

The US isn't producing HEU anymore but still has a decent sized stockpile of it.

A number of the pits in the active stockpile are actually composite Pu/HEU pits & you can actually use HEU in implosion weapons as well.

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