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Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

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Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#11

Post by danbruc »

BowBun wrote: post #6

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

With enough uranium and no expectation of high efficiency it is probably not too hard to build a gun type device and I think very well doable by a terrorist group. The tricky part is doing it with little material and high efficiency. And of course a dirty bomb is trivial but also not nearly as scary as often portrait.

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#12

Post by 3pt14159 »

BowBun wrote: post #6

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

It's pretty easy if you have resources. The hard part isn't building the bomb if you have weapons grade fissile material. The hard part is doing it without FVEY getting wind of it.

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#13

Post by gh02t »

feld wrote: post #4

> Photos of the arrests show a policeman in a ski mask holding a Kalashnikov while Chetrus knelt on a sidewalk in front of the bank. He would eventually be sentenced to five years in prison. This guy is involved in the sale of enriched uranium and he gets FIVE YEARS?!

Ten kilos of HEU may or may not be a concern, it's hard to say and I don't see the actual enrichment in the article. "Highly enriched" means any enrichment above 20% enrichment but below "weapons grade" (85%). It usually means something close to 20%... 10 kg of 20% enriched is scary but is a small fraction of what you need to make a bomb, so while it's scary it isn't necessarily that some terrorist group almost bought a pit for a bomb. I expect that has something to do with the apparently light sentence.

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#14

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Just got through reading "The Dead Hand", which is the story of the end of the Cold War. Highly recommended for those interested in how it all played out.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PXFYPQ/ref=dp-kindle-re...

It's frankly amazing that this hasn't happened much sooner. The amount of biological, chemical, and nuclear material lying around the former Soviet Union, basically guarded by people with starvation-level salaries and no future, was beyond alarming.

In fact, as bad as this is, the chemical and biological material was much worse. Some of that stuff could take out a city, then proceed to decimate an entire nation. Extremely scary stuff.

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#15

Post by noxin »

zombees wrote: post #3
hackuser wrote: post #2

Also of interest is this table showing prior siezures (by law enforcement and government security agencies, I assume) of nuclear material, including over a dozen instances of highly enriched uranium (!) http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18849/previous-sei...

Holy shit. Where is all of this being sourced? Is this all "fall of the Soviet Union" stuff where someone wandered into a silo and took apart a bomb?

A few years ago there was a report [0] listing weaknesses in the protection of nuclear material and smuggling possibilities.

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/12/how-to-get...

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#16

Post by forgotmypassw »

BowBun wrote: post #6

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

Less terrifying as opposed to governements hoarding massive amounts of weapon-grade enriched Uranium?

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#17

Post by madaxe_again »

So, when the USSR disbanded, many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want.

In theory, Russia took the warheads back and looked after them.

In practice, there was an initial period of everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing from silos, and the response was to fill them with concrete to prevent any further access.

What then happened is gangs came in the dead of night with diggers and drills and unearthed silos, and took who knows what.

My source is a lengthy chat with a chap at Pervomaisk, a Soviet missile silo in Ukraine, who used to be the guy who'd press the button (there are two buttons and two keys, but he explained that you could use the soviet flagpole in there to press the other button). Now he gives tours to tourists. $1 for Ukrainians. $5 for Russians. $10 for ex-USSR members. $20 for foreigners. $100 for Americans - or something like that. I laughed heartily at their pricing structure, before straddling the Satan missile for the obligatory "riding the bomb" photo.

This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR, and wasn't limited to fissile material - Degelen mountain in Kaz, for one, where they not only dug up left over Pu, but also thousands of tonnes of radioactive copper (cabling used for remote monitoring, power, and detonation of subsurface tests), which made its way into the global electronic supply chain, and was only discovered after they installed x-ray detectors at Dover for scanning for stowaways. My original source for that was a British truck driver who was paid to keep hush and not talk about why he'd ended up with (mild, flu-like, had to retire) radiation sickness - but it hit the press a few years later anyway.

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#18

Post by SEJeff »

BowBun wrote: post #6

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

A dirty bomb would be trivial to create, but an actual nuclear device would require some serious expertise and hardware to create

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#19

Post by madaxe_again »

danbruc wrote: post #11
BowBun wrote: post #6

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

With enough uranium and no expectation of high efficiency it is probably not too hard to build a gun type device and I think very well doable by a terrorist group. The tricky part is doing it with little material and high efficiency. And of course a dirty bomb is trivial but also not nearly as scary as often portrait.

Yep. Implosion devices are tricky and require serious hydrodynamic engineering, but you could build a "gun" or "layer cake" type device without too much expertise. They have the added "advantage" of being very dirty (inefficient).

Re: Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

#20

Post by [deleted] »

madaxe_again wrote: post #19
danbruc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With enough uranium and no expectation of high efficiency it is probably not too hard to build a gun type device and I think very well doable by a terrorist group. The tricky part is doing it with little material and high efficiency. And of course a dirty bomb is trivial but also not nearly as scary as often portrait.

Yep. Implosion devices are tricky and require serious hydrodynamic engineering, but you could build a "gun" or "layer cake" type device without too much expertise. They have the added "advantage" of being very dirty (inefficient).

[deleted]
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