@article{
author = {Matt Caplan},
title = {Implosion Nuclear Weapons with 60%-Enriched Uranium},
journal = {Science & Global Security},
volume = {33},
number = {1-3},
pages = {89-101},
year = {2025},
URL = {https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2025/12/implosion_nuclear_weapons_with.html},
eprint = {},
abstract = {This work considers the direct use of 60%-enriched uranium in pure fission nuclear weapons. From numerical simulations and simple analytics this work shows that substituting a weapons-grade core for a 60%-enriched core reduces the yield by a factor of 4 to 5 that is fairly insensitive to classified design details. A weapon designed to achieve a nominal 10?kt yield using weapons-grade uranium could therefore still produce a modest yield of 2-3 kt using a core of lower enrichment.}
}