I just see them as demonstrating a proof of concept (like ORNL demonstrating the splitting of an atom via neutron bombardment) and not as an attempt to develop a path towards arbitrary prime factorization.
Whatever the future prototype will be, it won’t be created by incrementally improving on those proof of concept demonstrations.
“theoretically, if you smash enough radioactive stuff together into a critical mass it will fission, so we’re going to compress these bananas until we hit that point”.
Potassium-40 does not produce neutrons as part if its decay process, so it is not even theoretically possible to achieve criticality in that manner.
The proof of concept ORNL tests used neutron bombardment which IS theoretically a method of achieving criticality, but there was no path for incremental improvements of those specific ORNL tests into anything resembling a weapon.
There actually were weapons tests that used neutron initiators but the source of those neutrons was not a particle accelerator. (Which is good because it’s hard to carry an entire particle accelerator laboratory in an ICBM)
I agree that those experiments are not scalable.
I just see them as demonstrating a proof of concept (like ORNL demonstrating the splitting of an atom via neutron bombardment) and not as an attempt to develop a path towards arbitrary prime factorization.
Whatever the future prototype will be, it won’t be created by incrementally improving on those proof of concept demonstrations.
Potassium-40 does not produce neutrons as part if its decay process, so it is not even theoretically possible to achieve criticality in that manner.
The proof of concept ORNL tests used neutron bombardment which IS theoretically a method of achieving criticality, but there was no path for incremental improvements of those specific ORNL tests into anything resembling a weapon.
There actually were weapons tests that used neutron initiators but the source of those neutrons was not a particle accelerator. (Which is good because it’s hard to carry an entire particle accelerator laboratory in an ICBM)