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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

#41

Post by dogma1138 »

venomsnake wrote: post #35
dogma1138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR and the US have enriched probably a million tons of it by now, the EU has enrichment capacity of about 20,000 tSWU which they used to enrich Uranium to about 4% (some to higher levels for research/breeders/medical plants). They are the 2nd largest producer of low and high level of enriched Uranium in the world, and also due to various security blunders also helped to proliferate nuclear technology. It's expe…

Weren't breeder reactors solving that problem?

Yes, but they aren't that common* , especially in very large installation pretty much since the 60's and 70's most nuclear reactors that were build were light water fast reactors. The advantages of breeders started to fade away when the cost of enrichment dropped significantly and when new stockpiles of Uranium were found, after the fall of the USSR when Russia became an exporter of Uranium it made them pretty much non-viable. They are still used to create medical and research isotopes, and Plutonium for either weapons or for nuclear batteries. Today there are 2 maybe 3 actual breeder reactors that are used for commercial power production. Most next-gen reactor design are breeders, or breed-capable (you can alternate between power-production and fuel breeding cycles) but none of them were built as of yet.

*Pretty much all reactors are create new fissile material even in normal fission Plutonium is created in the fuel rods and about 30% of the thermal energy produced by a power producing reactor comes from PU decay and fission. But breeder reactors are ones that designed to breed fissile material from fertile material (reactor based enrichment) so they create more fuel than what they consume but they can't really be used to produce power at that time. Some reactors combine the 2 and they'll have a power producing phase and a breeding phase usually they'll have several cores and move the fuel around to either breed or burn it.

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

#42

Post by MrZongle2 »

goodcanadian wrote: post #37
onewaystreet wrote: post #34

If this group has had enriched uranium for sale for the past sixteen years you would think that they would have sold it to North Korea or Iran a long time ago.

I don't think North Korea or Iran have much need of a single bomb's worth of enriched uranium. They have far more interest in producing their own.

It might be of use for a couple of reasons. One, you can compare the purchased material to that which you're trying to produce. Second, with the purchased material you can assemble and test-detonate a bomb, which not only causes other countries' intelligence agencies to question the value of their sources but gives you leverage in future negotiations.

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

#43

Post by rrggrr »

Unknown Russian black marketeer OR an unknown state's spy agency with a very effective honeypot for targeting and eliminating terrorist organizations? If the latter its a terrific self-funding operation taking some very bad people off the street. If you're going to worry about nuclear detonation then concern yourself with command and control of existing weaponized stockpiles. Stewarship is a challenge for developed nations, its got to be a nightmare for developing countries.

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

#44

Post by jessriedel »

madaxe_again wrote: post #17

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…

> many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want.

An important side point: Ukraine definitely wanted nuclear weapons, in particular as a viable threat against being re-annexed by Russia. Ukraine gave them up only after receiving a solemn promise by the US and UK that they would protect Ukraine's territorial integrity.

"On December 5, 1994 the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Britain and the United States signed a memorandum to provide Ukraine with security assurances in connection with its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine

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

#45

Post by agentultra »

dogma1138 wrote: post #27
agentultra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is curious -- it's not like enriching Uranium is easy. It's a very expensive process with incredibly low yields if I understand it correctly.

The USSR and the US have enriched probably a million tons of it by now, the EU has enrichment capacity of about 20,000 tSWU which they used to enrich Uranium to about 4% (some to higher levels for research/breeders/medical plants). They are the 2nd largest producer of low and high level of enriched Uranium in the world, and also due to various security blunders also helped to proliferate nuclear technology. It's expe…

Thank you!

How much of that production between the US and USSR is weapons-grade?

If you have links or books to recommend that would be great.

Cheers!

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

#46

Post by ufmace »

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 depends on exactly how much skill these guys have. It's trivially easy, compared to getting the weapons-grade materials in the first place. It's also impossibly difficult, compared to building suicide bomb vests and such. You do need enough of a science and engineering base to be able to build something new, based entirely on theoretical calculations, when you've never seen an example before.

If ISIS starts turning out their own rifles, ammo, truck repair parts, maybe some drones or something, or otherwise demonstrates dedication at a societal level to designing and building things, then I'd start to worry. As it is now, it's pretty hard to buy.

And speaking of potential damage, a nuclear blast is just the start of the potential issues. The real question, if somebody managed to pull that off, is how would the target of such an attack reply? How would the allies of that target think and expect, and how would any countries that are rivals to the target and/or allied/sympathetic to the suspected attackers react to the response?

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

#47

Post by pdkl95 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #17

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…

> everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing

> This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR

This wasn't limited to military hardware. I visited Russia right after the dissolution (summer 92), and there as a mixture of celebration and uncertainty about what was going to fill the power vacuum.

Organized crime was simply buying both land and power. With the exchange rate crashing 5 RUB:USD per day[1], literally everyone was panicking to get hard currency or anything that would otherwise hold value. I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency).

[1] banks were giving ~95-100 RUB/USD when I arrived. A bit over two weeks later it was >180 RUB/USD.

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

#48

Post by ajmurmann »

acqq wrote: post #31

In the article: "The FBI has privately discounted Moldovan claims that radioactive materials seized in more recent smuggling incidents here were being sought by the Islamic State terrorist group. " Everything's safe, then? Let's investigate: According to the Moldovan police presentation: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2449125-moldova-law-... The person interested in buying was of Arab-Islamic origin, Yosif F…

Why is this being downvoted?

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

#49

Post by IshKebab »

jessriedel wrote: post #44
madaxe_again wrote: post #17

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…

> many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want. An important side point: Ukraine definitely wanted nuclear weapons, in particular as a viable threat against being re-annexed by Russia. Ukraine gave them up only after receiving a solemn promise by the US and UK that they would protect Ukraine's territorial integrity. "On December 5, 1994 the leaders of U…

Remind me never to sign a memorandum with Britain or America...

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

#50

Post by dogma1138 »

agentultra wrote: post #45
dogma1138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR and the US have enriched probably a million tons of it by now, the EU has enrichment capacity of about 20,000 tSWU which they used to enrich Uranium to about 4% (some to higher levels for research/breeders/medical plants). They are the 2nd largest producer of low and high level of enriched Uranium in the world, and also due to various security blunders also helped to proliferate nuclear technology. It's expe…

Thank you! How much of that production between the US and USSR is weapons-grade? If you have links or books to recommend that would be great. Cheers!

I don't really know those numbers (not sure if anyone does, and you know various treaties make any numbers published debatable because the official should be 0 or very close to it) officially they aren't supposed to make any new weapons and they have to disassemble existing ones and to dilute their highly enriched uranium stockpiles (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, probably some others too). Uranium enrichment is usually measured in SWU's that's separation work units which basically means your capacity to separate Uranium with 1 ton of raw Uranium as the feeding source. Basically to get 90% or higher enriched uranium you need about 1000-1200 SWU's which will produce 5-6kg* of weapons grade uranium from 1 ton of raw feed. If you have en enrichment capacity of 20,000,000 SWU you should be able to produce about 100,000 tons of weapons grade uranium per year (enough for about 2000* non salted/boosted bombs)

As for books don't have anything on top of my head but this is a good source of info http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/convers... The association of american scientists and similar organizations should also have plenty of nuclear related information. As I had to Google this earlier, and you might do it now, may I be the 1st one to welcome you to the watch list.

* may vary based on your enrichment process

* based on common publicly known weapon designs (50kg per fissile core) not sure how low an Uranium fissile core can get once you start getting into salting and multi staged fission.

Edit: Just to elaborate on the previous comment.

The difference in effort required between weapons grade and fuel grade uranium is almost negligible (this is why breakout is so easy for nuclear powered states). A 1000SWU on average will produce 5KG of weapons grade Uranium and about 100-120KG of reactor grade uranium. A 1000MW nuclear power plant needs about 75 tons of fuel per year (or upto 18 months depending on the burn rate), a bomb needs under 50kg of Uranium.

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