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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

#71

Post by lojack »

david-given wrote: post #40
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.

I'd imagine that building a proper bomb, i.e. large and efficient one, is quite hard --- the geometry and timing of the implosion charges is complex, fiddly, and difficult to get right the first time. However, building something which squibs, i.e. undergoes a partial criticality and goes bang in a reasonably large but not city-killing way, and spreading a bunch of radioactive material about, is probably much easier.…

> However, building something which squibs, i.e. undergoes a partial criticality and goes bang in a reasonably large but not city-killing way, and spreading a bunch of radioactive material about, is probably much easier. (This is the 'dirty bomb' thing that was getting the press excited a couple of years back.)

My understanding is that dirty bombs don't even necessarily undergo any nuclear reaction. You don't even need the right kind of material for them. It's just a traditional bomb with radioactive material strapped to it.

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

#72

Post by ju-st »

bradleyjg wrote: post #67
TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine itself didn't learn from what happened to Poland in 1939. We had treaties that said we're to be aided by France and the UK...

Which they did at enormous cost in lives and money. Ditto for Belgium in 1914. If you had said Czechoslovakia in 1938 that would have been a much better example.

He propably refered to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War - the Allies did basically nothing until Germany invaded France

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

#73

Post by dsmithatx »

AUmrysh wrote: post #59

If western intelligence knows about this and wants to get it off the black market, why don't they just buy it themselves? Surely the criminals selling it don't care where the money comes from.

Exactly. This makes no sense. If we think there is a enough to be concerned about, we don't want a terrorist to get it. Just by the stuff. 3 middle man have been arrested for delivering samples. How about just hire some Russian mobster to meet with the next middle man and get it off the street. Seems like they are too focused on catching the current owner of it which seems stupid to me.

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

#74

Post by ycosynot »

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.

And yet I had gotten downvoted when I said that eventually there will be no privacy at all in cities, because it is too much of a problem. What can go wrong, will go wrong. You just have to wait for the first incident.

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

#75

Post by emp_zealoth »

bradleyjg wrote: post #67
TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine itself didn't learn from what happened to Poland in 1939. We had treaties that said we're to be aided by France and the UK...

Which they did at enormous cost in lives and money. Ditto for Belgium in 1914. If you had said Czechoslovakia in 1938 that would have been a much better example.

How can you call fighting to save their own damn asses only after they were attacked by Germany coming to Poland's aid?

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

#76

Post by aburan28 »

venomsnake wrote: post #33
dave_sullivan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_... , NK, Pakistan, India, Israel... To say nothing of the others... Every individual in every step in the supply chain is beyond corruption? Or blackmail? The door doesn't even need to be left open.

Israel is only "widely believed" to have nuclear weapons.

No they definitely have nuclear weapons. Relating to this article is the fact that Israel stole and smuggled 100kg+ of uranium from Pennsylvania http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-u...

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

#77

Post by dang »

hackuser wrote: post #36
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...

Dang (or whoever is minding the store right now): A minor concern, but something is wrong with the time on comments: * I posted the parent comment yesterday * Currently, it says "2 hours ago" * If I click "2 hours ago", the new page still says "2 hours ago" * If I click "reply", the new page says "22 hours ago", which seems plausible.

It's because of the experiment I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417.

Not sure what to do about this. I suppose we can make the older comments keep their original timestamps and just be older than the timestamp at the top. That already happens when we merge threads anyway.

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

#78

Post by mjevans »

lojack wrote: post #71
david-given wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that building a proper bomb, i.e. large and efficient one, is quite hard --- the geometry and timing of the implosion charges is complex, fiddly, and difficult to get right the first time. However, building something which squibs, i.e. undergoes a partial criticality and goes bang in a reasonably large but not city-killing way, and spreading a bunch of radioactive material about, is probably much easier.…

> However, building something which squibs, i.e. undergoes a partial criticality and goes bang in a reasonably large but not city-killing way, and spreading a bunch of radioactive material about, is probably much easier. (This is the 'dirty bomb' thing that was getting the press excited a couple of years back.) My understanding is that dirty bombs don't even necessarily undergo any nuclear reaction. You don't even ne…

Think much more like a grenade; the dirty bomb is looking to use explosives to disperse and 'poison' an area with radioactive contamination.

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

#79

Post by gh02t »

jhayward wrote: post #39
gh02t wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bough…

I believe the 20% threshold was chosen because that represents the largest plant and processing cost step in enrichment. In other words once it is at 20% you can use a much smaller enrichment plant to take it to weapons level due to the nature of the cascade. My back of the envelope calcu-guess is that 20% enriched represents about 95% of the work on the way to weapons grade. [edit: guess based on only isotope ratios…

The calculations for it are a little weird and involve a rather strange unit called the SWU (separative work unit) and which is actually independent of the separation process, but it works out to be more like ~75% of the effort to go from natural -> 20% enriched as it is to go from 20% -> 95%.

You still need the raw mass though. To get enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb (~15kg) from 20% enriched feed stock and discharging 2% enriched depleted uranium waste you need about 65kg of 20% enriched.

So 10kg (assuming it's 20%) is definitely concerning, but it's not enough to make a bomb.

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

#80

Post by gh02t »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #21
gh02t wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bough…

What about using this stuff for a dirty bomb?

It's not very radioactive, I've held weapons grade uranium in my hand before (well, it was in a metal container). It is chemically very toxic since it's a heavy metal, very similar to something like arsenic.
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