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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

#81

Post by rhino369 »

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.

>Which they did at enormous cost in lives and money.

They half assed tried it by declaring war on germany without actually starting the war. But they let the USSR--which also invaded Poland--keep the country after the war.

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

#82

Post by gh02t »

vonmoltke wrote: post #64
akiselev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: *>> Rockefeller asked then-CIA Director Porter Goss whether enough had vanished from Russia’s stockpile to build a nuclear weapon. “There is sufficient material unaccounted for so that it would be possible for those with know-how to construct a nuclear weapon,” Goss responded. Previously in the article they mentioned that this 10kg of Uranium believed to be for sale on the black market is a fifth of…

> Previously in the article they mentioned that this 10kg of Uranium believed to be for sale on the black market is a fifth of what you would need for a Hiroshima-type weapon but it's just about enough for a well designed implosion nuke. With 60kg of HEU I could build Little Boy by myself in my garage with parts I can get at Home Depot and Cabela's. With 10kg of HEU I could build Fat Man with a breeder reactor, a cou…

That estimate for an implosion weapon is a little low by my reckoning, for it to be even remotely in that ballpark it'd require extensive reflection and other trickery. Without doing the math, I'd guesstimate a more realistic number to be about 1/3rd to 1/2 that neededfor a realistic implosion weapon.

But an implosion weapon is infinitely more complicated, even if I hand you all the material it just isn't going to happen that someone would be able to build it in their garage. The concept is pretty simple, but there are a lot of little gotchas and also the machining and electrical tolerances are impossibly difficult without very specialized tools even if you had detailed plans. The design for the initiator in particular was notoriously a major problem during the Manhattan project and they really weren't sure if any of the ideas they had would work.

Gun-assembled weapons are simpler but still pretty complicated. I'm not sure there would be much benefit to using only 10kg of U-235, which is way subcritical. You'd get a tiny bit of extra boom and some nasty isotopes from the fissions, but strapping some Co-60 to a bomb would probably be more effective. For comparison, Little Boy used around 64 kg, though that was more than the minimum needed.

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

#83

Post by jacquesm »

pdkl95 wrote: post #47
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],…

> I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency).

It did. I was in Krosno visiting there right up against the Ukranian border (about 35 km) around that time and there was a 'black market' there that sold just about anything that could be carted across the border or that could move by itself. Regular army gear (including weapons and munition) were openly for sale, vehicles as many as you wanted and 'larger stuff' (unspecified but it was pretty clear what they meant) to order.

Apparently you could even buy warplanes if you had the means to pick them up, and one dutch scrap metal trader did just that (and promptly got caught with 2 more-or-less combat ready Mig 21's at the Dutch border in a large truck...).

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

#84

Post by HillaryBriss »

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…

Wait. Radioactive copper in the global electronics supply chain?

What strategies can an average joe use to minimize exposure to that?

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

#85

Post by iSnow »

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.

Maybe it's just not true that there are 50+kg of weapons grade Uranium are out there, somewhere. Maybe it's all just a couple of grams that were specimens of production runs.

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

#86

Post by nosuchthing »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #84
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…

Wait. Radioactive copper in the global electronics supply chain? What strategies can an average joe use to minimize exposure to that?

Geiger Counter / Radiation Sensor: http://www.adafruit.com/categories/73

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

#87

Post by api »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #84
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…

Wait. Radioactive copper in the global electronics supply chain? What strategies can an average joe use to minimize exposure to that?

The quantity in an individual device is likely to be so tiny (milligrams) that it's not a risk. It's also likely to have been melted down and put through the global recycling chain which would have substantially diluted it. But it was a risk to people handling the original material in bulk. An unknown number of workers in the global copper supply and recycling chain were likely exposed to above-limit doses.

A lot of materials safety concerns are more for protection of workers than end users. Lead removal from electronics is an example. There's not really any risk to owning electronics with lead in them unless you are incinerating them or enjoy licking circuit boards, but it is a serious occupational risk to factory workers and also a disposal problem.

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

pdkl95 wrote: post #47
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],…

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by david-given »

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…

Mmm... fair point. I'd expect the nuclear bomb to do a better job of vapourising the plutonium than conventional explosives, but I don't know whether that would actually do more damage.

Maybe we're better off forgetting about a bomb completely. Grind it up fine, watch while it spontaneously catches fire (plutonium chemistry is weird!), dissolve the plutonium oxide in nitric acid, water down and then drive around the city spraying it into the air in a fine mist...

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

#90

Post by godgod »

If the US govt hadn't lied to us for the past few decades, I'd tend to give them the benefit of doubt here, but something tells me this is more US propaganda. I hate having to say that about my own govt but they have motives to make Russia look like the bad guy in every regard.
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