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Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

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Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#101

Post by lupusreal »

cannonpr wrote: post #66
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory. That…

Casting, machining or welding plutonium into the right shapes and purities without killing your self, or some of the other exotic metals, without killing your self or making your neighbours sick in a sub 1-3 week horizon is incredibly challenging. The exact geometries you need to achieve aren’t easily available either neither is measuring is you achieved them without again killing your self. Getting a dirty fizzle is…

Plutonium won't work in a gun-type device like described in that magazine, the Pu-240 contamination makes it far too sensitive.

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#102

Post by schmidtleonard »

PaulHoule wrote: post #69
joegibbs wrote: post #27

Say if an adversary with a small nuclear program that hasn’t yet achieved a weapon got a hold of this, what kind of impact would that make?

There is the fission stage and the fusion stage. The fission stage in this image is not well represented. It is generally known how to make a fission stage similar to the “Fat Man” device but the “Fat Man” device is larger than the whole warhead with both a fission and fusion stage that fits on a Minuteman 3. The fission stage in that warhead has numerous refinements that help miniaturize it, for instance the implosi…

The secondary isn't well represented either: that radiation case isn't focusing any X-Rays and the stairstep in the tamper would tear it in two when ablation started. Plus, as you note, the primary is impossibly screwed up as well, with what looks like a single point of initiation and zero details on the boosting. It doesn't just look simplified, it looks like every part has been corrupted with a feature that makes it impossible to mistake for real while being slightly less crude than the "Mastercard" or British designs.

Besides, real engineering doesn't just need a schematics, it needs details, and some of the missing ones are notorious (FOGBANK) and inherently difficult to figure out with any confidence in the absence of weapons tests (or even more expensive giant buildings crammed to the gills with lasers).

So yeah, not very useful to an aspiring designer. I understand the author's surprise but I suspect they really did just become a few notches less crazy about the redundant protection on information that has been public for 30 years.

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#103

Post by nirav72 »

virgulino wrote: post #4

For anyone interested in the basics of nuclear weapons, I highly recommend the "Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work" lectures by Matthew Bunn, a man heavily involved in nuclear arms control. His lectures are always highly entertaining, a real pleasure to watch. This is a clip from his lecture explaining the basics of thermonuclear warheads: https://youtu.be/YMuRpx4T2Rw And the full “Nuclear 101” lecture, in two parts…

Another one - fascinating video on how nuclear weapons locking systems work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1LPmAF2eNA

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#104

Post by thesuitonym »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63
bitexploder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun idea, there basically are no nuclear secrets. If you look long enough you can pretty much learn everything except some in the weeds details of the most modern nuclear warheads. My basic premise is all our “enemies” have this info by now and the complexity is actually in building them, not how they work or how to build them.

There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory. That…

I'm sure in 1985 plutonium was available in every corner drugstore, but in 2024 it's a little hard to come by.

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#105

Post by [deleted] »

rsfern wrote: post #95
gnfargbl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of detail about why the author thinks it is notable that Sandia released this image. There's very little about what it is in this image itself that the author finds interesting, save for some comment about a dip which could be intended to focus neutron flux from the primary to the secondary. I feel that's the kind of thing an appropriate undergraduate would imagine in a short amount of time.

I think you’re just looking for the surprise factor in the wrong place. The notability is all about Sandia’s public release criteria, which are pretty much orthogonal to whether or not the information is publicly known. I don’t think the author finds any particular detail interesting or new in and of itself, they even compare to other public illustrations that have the kind of detail you are talking about.

[deleted]

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#106

Post by [deleted] »

virgulino wrote: post #4

For anyone interested in the basics of nuclear weapons, I highly recommend the "Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work" lectures by Matthew Bunn, a man heavily involved in nuclear arms control. His lectures are always highly entertaining, a real pleasure to watch. This is a clip from his lecture explaining the basics of thermonuclear warheads: https://youtu.be/YMuRpx4T2Rw And the full “Nuclear 101” lecture, in two parts…

[deleted]

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#107

Post by keepamovin »

gnfargbl wrote: post #39
defrost wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? In two decades of crawling through most of the declassified public nuclear material from the US nuclear weapons program, some exposure to classified material, and numerous hours of interviews with working and retired nuclear scientists he believes it's the single most detailed schematic of an actual specific type of warhead he's seen so far…

OK, but my question remains: what is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I did study nuclear physics to master's level. To my eye, there's nothing at all interesting about this image. It looks like informed speculation. Without any confirmation that this is a real weapons design (and I see no reason at all to believe it is) then it tells us absolutely n…

[flagged]

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#108

Post by zubiaur »

bee_rider wrote: post #97

> This is the kind of thing that I think people assume the government labs might do, but in my experience, is pretty unusual and pretty unlikely. In general, you have to remember that the national laboratories are pretty, well, boring, when it comes to classified information. They want to be boring in this respect. They are not doing cloak-and-dagger stuff on the regular. They’re scientists and engineers for the most…

Extremely boring, bureaucratic and inefficient. With a few exceptions, I guess they are a way to have Phds on retainer.

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#109

Post by oneshtein »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63
bitexploder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun idea, there basically are no nuclear secrets. If you look long enough you can pretty much learn everything except some in the weeds details of the most modern nuclear warheads. My basic premise is all our “enemies” have this info by now and the complexity is actually in building them, not how they work or how to build them.

There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory. That…

Chemical attacks, like one sarin attack in Tokyo by Aum Shinrikyo, are few orders of magnitude cheaper than any nuclear attack.

Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?

#110

Post by lazide »

gnfargbl wrote: post #48
matthewmcg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says it a few paragraphs in: “To give a sense of how strange this is, here is the only “officially sanctioned” way to represent a multistage thermonuclear weapon, according to US Department of Energy guidance since the 1990s: Figure 13.9, “Unclassified Illustration of a Staged Weapon (Source: TCG-NAS-2, March 1997),” from the Nuclear Matters Handbook 2020 (Revised), published by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defen…

If the story here is that the US DoE is now implicitly confirming common public-domain knowledge that can be found immediately on Wikipedia then sure, that's a story of minor interest. That story is nothing like the title of the blog, though!

speculation can be found on Wikipedia, perhaps accurate speculation, perhaps not.

DoE contractors leaking details that confirm that speculation would indeed be a big deal, and might well save adversaries some real time and mistakes they’d otherwise make.

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