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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

#31

Post by acqq »

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 Fiasal Ibrahim, 1975, citizen of Republic of Sudan, Africa.

Also, Sky News:

http://news.sky.com/story/1565320/the-colonel-dirty-bombs-an...

"Investigators found contracts made out to a Sudanese doctor named Yosif Faisal Ibrahim for attack helicopters and armoured personnel carriers.

There was a copy of Ibrahim's passport, and evidence that Chetrus was trying to help him obtain a Moldovan visa. Skype messages suggested he was interested in uranium and the dirty bomb plans.

The deal was interrupted by the sting, but it looked like it was well advanced. A lawyer working with the criminal ring had even travelled to Sudan, officials said."

There are extremists in Sudan endorsing IS, Reuters, 2014:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-sudan-islamic-s...

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#Sharia_law

"The legal system in Sudan is based on Islamic Sharia law." "Stoning remains a judicial punishment in Sudan. Between 2009 and 2012, several women were sentenced to death by stoning.[61][62][63]"

FBI's and the article's claim could still be technically true (Ibrahim from Islamic Sudan, not ISIS) but it helps us being better informed.

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

#33

Post by venomsnake »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #9
zombees wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit. Where is all of this being sourced? Is this all "fall of the Soviet Union" stuff where someone wandered into a silo and took apart a bomb?

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.

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

#35

Post by venomsnake »

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…

Weren't breeder reactors solving that problem?

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

#36

Post by hackuser »

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.

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

#37

Post by goodcanadian »

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.

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

#38

Post by hackuser »

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.

Even North Korea pulled it off. Nuclear weapons are 70 year old technology.

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

#39

Post by jhayward »

gh02t wrote: post #13
feld wrote: post #4

> Photos of the arrests show a policeman in a ski mask holding a Kalashnikov while Chetrus knelt on a sidewalk in front of the bank. He would eventually be sentenced to five years in prison. This guy is involved in the sale of enriched uranium and he gets FIVE YEARS?!

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, not any specifics of yield of the various enrichment processes]

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

#40

Post by david-given »

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. (This is the 'dirty bomb' thing that was getting the press excited a couple of years back.)

(Fun fact: if you're locked in a room with a nuke on a timer, your best option is probably to beat the shit out of it with an axe. Provided you can physically damage it enough to upset the implosion geometry, it won't go off properly. Of course, you'll still die, but...)

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