[Alt History] Alternative conclusion to the Pacific conflict in WW 2

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It's not clear that this has happened at all. Certainly it can't be done at present, owing to the test ban treaty.

Before the end of testing some of the US tests were for research but others were indeed to verify that the arsenal was still functional.

You'd need fresh tritium for the cores of the big ones but that's injected during the arming process and it is not burdensome to keep up tritium production. It's replaced radium in "glow in the dark stuff.

Some very old designs had americium (I think) in their cores and that needed to eb replaced every 6 months but I believe all of those would have been phased out by now.

After that even the plutonium won't be bothered by a few measly decades. It's really only conventional aging and corrosion on the conventional components that might be a problem. The test ban treaty shouldn't stop you from double-checking those.