We Need A Separate Forum for Fuses

nonoise
@geoffkait
It was Brent Jessee (of audiotues.com) who told me the IAEA banned the use of certain metals used in NOS tubes for fear of who could get their hands on them for nefarious purposes (like building illicit nukes). After that, they never sounded the same, no matter how exacting they made them.

>>>>Of course by banning them they alerted the bad guys to the specific metals they needed to obtain. Or is it Top Secret? And if so how did Brent Jessee find out? Furthermore, there’s much more to constructing a nuke than obtaining some obscure metals. And if the Government was smart they’d announce they banned metals that actually weren’t needed to make a nuke. Hel-loo! In addition, the construction of how to make a nuke is pretty well explained in a number of public sources like, you know, the book by Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Hel-loo!

@geoffkait 
It was more of a short generalization when he told me after I asked him why NOS were better. I would assume that way back then, simply banning certain metals was the way to go. There were no announcements, just the restrictions that went over the public's head, unless you were in the business of using said metals. Brent, being in the business, most likely came across the info like anyone else with the resources and desire to know since it affected him.

As for the public sources, there was the occasional book in the library that had that info on making your own bomb but it was nothing like today, with the internet. You had to seriously source the material.

All the best,
Nonoise

@douglas_schroeder 
Looks like Almarg sums up the point eloquently. And I firmly believe he's right in his assertion that electronics designers wouldn't consider sensitivity to a fuse to be a virtue. It takes no skill or cost to build a circuit exceedingly sensitive to minor perturbations. Use the smallest, cheapest transformers. Use the smallest, cheapest filter caps. Don't bother with more intensive filtering or smoothing. I'm highly confident in my ability to design power supplies that would be revealing of all manner of silliness. I don't think I'll be designing Pass power supplies in the near future. 

Looks like Almarg sums up the point eloquently

But it was, in the end, an assumption. Most engineers would consider a fuse to be nothing more than a protection device, since that's it's intended purpose. It turns out though, that it has ramifications beyond it's intended purpose, and there are those who've bothered to see for themselves if there's any benefit to changing the fuse for a better one, as  opposed to those who simply refuse to try.

All we're doing here is going in circles.

All the best,
Nonoise

Nonoise, it sounds like an excellent marketing ploy.