Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo? • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by why_only_15 » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #135

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…

Unless he is actually employed in the classification process inside these agencies, he does not know everything that is officially sanctioned. It’s all guesswork, from the outside.

To some degree this is true, but he’s also FOIA’d documents that describe what’s officially sanctioned.

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

#182

Post by ein0p » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 7:29 PM UTC

gnfargbl wrote: post #26

What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? Pretty much every schematic of a Teller-Ulam type weapon -- a schematic which you will find in every introductory Nuclear Physics textbook -- shows a large cylinder with a spherical fission device at the top and a cylindrical fusion device at the bottom, plus some FOGBANK-type material of unconfirmed purpose. This image looks exactly like tho…

Yeah, the people you’d want to hide this from already know all this, and in some cases have superior designs.

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

#183

Post by fragmede » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

why_only_15 wrote: post #180

fragmede wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's a psyop designed to make adversaries waste their time on a design that couldn't work.

In the post he mentions why he thinks this is unlikely and is not a thing the US has done previously.

that's exactly what a CIA plant trying to get adversaries to buy into this drawing as being feasible to waste their time would say

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

#184

Post by lukas099 » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 7:55 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #6

That thing is supposed to be a logo? I'm reminded of CGP Gray's videos about flags. https://www.youtube.com/user/cgpgrey/videos Like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4w6808wJcU About US state flags

It probably goes against everything they teach in design school, but I find it charming.

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

#185

Post by tabtab » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

That would have made a good Silicon Valley plot: they discover they accidentally put a trade secret in their logo, and have to jump through hoops to collect, hide, and delete the bad version without making competitors curious about their effort.

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

#186

Post by declan_roberts » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:12 PM UTC

Powerpoint slides are such a hilarious opsec risk.

When @Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA spying operation, all he did was download everybody's powerpoint presentations and send them to @andygreenwald.

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

#187

Post by baybal2 » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:16 PM UTC

renhanxue wrote: post #124

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.

The author is a historian whose main published work is the book Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States . He isn't very interested in the information itself; he's interested in where it comes from and in the process that led to its release. It's notable not because it contains interesting information, it's notable because it seems like it might represent a radical break with established p…

[dead]

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

#188

Post by MobiusHorizons » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:19 PM UTC

scubbo wrote: post #145

defrost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As nmadden noted there's a lot of detail in the article . > That seems extremely unlikely to me. None the less his nuclearsecrecy blog has been about for many many years and he's had a great deal of contact with people who have walked up to the line. It's not that uncommon for historians to have neither confirm nor deny but we can understand various silences relations with experts - even the OG Manhatten Project had…

> walked up to the line I'm not familiar with that idiom, and searching for it only gives me "Walk the line" - what does it mean?

It’s related to the term crossed the line, which I believe originated with Cesar crossing the rubicon. Crossing the line means breaking some rule or taboo in a way that has significant or permanent consequences. Walking up to the line is getting close without crossing.

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

#189

Post by Earw0rm » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:25 PM UTC

gnfargbl wrote: post #149

next_xibalba wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? The level of detail, particularly the articulation of components/subsystems (primary, secondary, radiation case, interstage medium, tamper, fusion fuel, and a "sparkplug"). All according to the article. Per author, DoE has very strict guidelines on the depiction of nukes, and this image appears to violate those guidelines. The official depi…

> I am speculating here, but it seems like DoE must believe that anything beyond simple shapes may provide bad actors (i.e. anyone but US Govt and allies) clues as to how to build a thermo-nuke. And with good reason: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science It's a bit like the Egg of Columbus. Doing it the first time needs a team of visionary geniuses, but once the trick is known to work then even us…

Yes and no. For terrorism purposes, the primary (more or less the same as a "Hiroshima"-level "A"-bomb) would surely more than suffice.

I'm sort of struggling to think why anyone other than a nation state (looking to prove itself worthy of a seat at various tables) would want to possess more bang than that.

Granted there are a few nations at or close to A-bomb tech whom we would definitely not want having its bigger brother. Iran and NK especially.

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

#190

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Sep 06, 2024, 8:28 PM UTC

simplicio wrote: post #171

I've worked on (unrelated to nuclear stuff) computer simulation projects for the Navy where they had standard, notional models of the battleship which had the same sort of general properties you'd expect a battleship to have, but wasn't based on the design of any real battleship, so they could share them with researchers to develop their codes on without having to worry about revealing classified details. Wonder if t…

The author addresses this in the addendum after the article. Something like that already exists, and it isn't this.

> MACE (Modal Analysis Correlation Exercise) assembly, and was created by the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in the 1990s to serve as a sort of a Utah Teapot of weapons structural modeling: a benign shape that could be used to test aspects of the code that would nonetheless tell you if the code would work for real weapons assemblies.