Booster charge

At a purely technical level, a sufficiently large detonator would initiate high explosives without the need for a booster charge. However, there are very good reasons why this method is never used. Firstly, there is a major safety issue, i.e. detonators are (like all primary explosives) much more sensitive to shock, heat, and friction than an explosive booster. Therefore, minimising the amount of primary explosive that users must store or carry greatly reduces the likelihood of serious accidents. An additional economic reason for using explosive booster charges is that chemical compounds used in detonators (e.g. lead styphnate) are comparatively expensive to produce and encapsulate when compared to the manufacturing costs of explosive boosters.