There's only so much you can do to keep an 80 year old technology developed with slide rules from being reverse engineered by a dedicated group of scientists with the benefit of 80 years of advancements in physics and access to a supercomputer (ie an iPhone).
Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
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Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#32Nuclear secrecy is a fascinating blog about this sort of thing. The designation “top secret” was first used for the Manhattan project, which of course the military developed in secret, and then unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by announcing it had destroyed the two Japanese cities. But still to this day, all the nuclear weapons stuff is shrouded in mystery and secrecy. How they dispose of the waste … classified,…
I honestly don’t mind that it’s opaque and non democratic
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cyber sabotage (see the documentary zero days)
It's arguably also in their interest strategically to be in a position where they are perpetually a couple of months away from making one but not to actually take that final step.
I don't think it is unreasonable to consider that they have the material stocked away somewhere ready to go. But more balanced gameplan makes more sense to them than to NK.
After all many other countries in area have nuclear weapons.
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an outside observer, the US is a beacon of transparency on this topic. In Israel the topic is under strict military censorship. What little discussion is allowed has to periodically sprinkled with the incantation "according to foreign sources".
Israel's entire nuclear program leaked out thanks to one guy, whom they later entrapped on a cruise ship and extradited to Israel. No buy the US keeps all the good secrets.
He was presuaded to leave the UK for Rome, where he was kidnapped, drugged, and transported to a waiting Israeli Navy ship that carried him to Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu#Pursuit_and_c...
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I guess that latter point is my real question - what would happen if you took one of the diagrams and the associated descriptions from something like "Dark Sun" and simply built it - what would happen?
There are critical details which can be overlooked in the declassified documents which effect everything from yield to whether the bomb works or not. Examples. - initiators in fission devices - explosive lenses in fission devices (what’s the exact mix/shape/required explosive payload? - large scale manufacture of high grade plutonium. What’s the exact effect of plutonium purity on yield/function? - how effective of a…
The Ivy Mike device (apart from the primary) didn't sound like it required huge precision - I'm sure "Dark Sun" refers to the radiation case being filled with expanded polystyrene held in place by copper nails hammered into place.
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#36Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#37I don't buy it. The crucial detail to buy the story is that Jim Frank told Dobson and Selden the truth: They were pulled aside by a senior researcher, Jim Frank. "Jim said, 'I bet you guys want to know how it turned out,'" Dobson recalls. "We said yes. And he told us that if it had been constructed, it would have made a pretty impressive bang." How impressive, they wanted to know. "On the same order of magnitude as H…
I buy it.
I believe it's fairly well understood that designing a theoretical atom bomb that probably works isn't "difficult", the difficulty is building it. The logistics, and procuring the materials, that's very very hard.
Also note, they did not cover refining the fissile material as part of their process, it was assumed that they had that. Arguably it's the refining that's by far the most difficult process.
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an outside observer, the US is a beacon of transparency on this topic. In Israel the topic is under strict military censorship. What little discussion is allowed has to periodically sprinkled with the incantation "according to foreign sources".
We don't even know if Israel has nuclear weapons. Most people think they they do, but it is neither confirmed nor denied by any official source.
Confirmation or denial wouldn't mean a thing, the real confirmation will come from either an insider leak (unlikely), a test (unlikely) or actual use (unlikely). So to all intents and purposes it is better if this is never resolved one way or the other, but the smart money is on Israel having between 80 and 100 warheads, with various bits of evidence to back that up. The bigger question in my opinion is what size those warheads are rather than whether they have them or not and whether or not any of them are H-Bombs rather than just fission devices. Other questions revolve around operational readiness.
Let's hope we'll never know for sure because I believe the most likely of those three unlikely possibilities is actual use. And that would be very bad news for the world indeed.
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#39I don't buy it. The crucial detail to buy the story is that Jim Frank told Dobson and Selden the truth: They were pulled aside by a senior researcher, Jim Frank. "Jim said, 'I bet you guys want to know how it turned out,'" Dobson recalls. "We said yes. And he told us that if it had been constructed, it would have made a pretty impressive bang." How impressive, they wanted to know. "On the same order of magnitude as H…
Looking at the now-unclassified report, it appears that the results were disclosed, though, in a way that seems generally consistent with the article. Page 8 of the linked PDF (the report of this experiment, heavily redacted for public release, even now; note that it was edited by Frank) says that the outcome of the experiment was disclosed to the designers:
Re: Two students built an A-bomb (2003)
#40The limiting factor is access to materials, tools, instruments, and "engineering capabilities". Access to these can be controlled. Joe's machine shop can not gain access to plutonium, or enough uranium to enrich to build a bomb. Achieving it with household items would be very special.
Can't they all -- except the production of plutonium in a reactor -- be made with upscaled garage tech?
Uranium isotope separation can be done with lasers, for example, instead of the masses of Zippe centrifuges that used to be required (or the absolutely enormous air diffusion plants and calutrons the Manhattan Project used).
If that's true, then the question becomes "how to produce a compact, cheap plutonium breeding reactor" + "how to separate out the plutonium". Both without dying, of course.
The conventional explosion can be simulated quite well on laptops now + small models can be tested. Exploding bridgewires are an off the shelf item now and not something Alvarez has to invent first. Do we need a big "beach ball" of large exploding lenses? Probably not. Not if we can simulate the explosion well enough (and we can add reflectors).
So how does The Serious Hacker get access to the explosives? Maybe make them in the garage with an upscale chemistry set?
The neutron generator is probably the easiest part to build these days.
So... the reactor and plutonium extraction are likely the limiting steps for a small but determined group of people. I bet lots and lots of cooling is necessary while the reactor operates. That'll be hard to hide!