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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?

#41

Post by mhh__ »

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…

Photos of even a hint of the inside are rare enough that he has another article show (in effect) a hint of an imprint from an old photocopying mistake.

I also doubt it's useful, but Ted Taylor could supposedly walk around a room full of nukes and guess based on the shape of the casing what was unique about a design

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

#42

Post by sandworm101 »

No. That is not a nuke. It is a mass simulator, specifically the electronic model of a mass simulator for a warhead. The various colors represent density of material. This would be used during aerodynamic simulations. That is why it is behind the graph about processors. This also explains the simple geometry as keeping things simple reduces the number of calculations.

(Note that nuke warheads fall nose-first, the opposite of space capsules. So the dense material is packed in the nose, with the lighter stuff at the back.)

The nearby disk looks like a represention of airflow around a falling warhead. They, like apollo, likely had an offset center of gravity that allowed them to stear by rotation, creating the asymetrical airflow shown on the disk. Falling in a spiral also probably frustrates interception. So that whole corner of the image is advertising Sandia's ability to do aerodynamic simulations.

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

#43

Post by gnfargbl »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #37
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…

The unusual thing, as stated repeatedly throughout the article, is that this is published by people who are under one of the strictest censorship systems in the world, a system that explicitly exist to prevent the publication exactly this sort of thing.

Yes. And as you'll know, since we both read the article, the author mentions what I believe to be the correct conclusion:

> The “obvious” answer, if my above assertions are true, is that it must not actually represent a thermonuclear secondary. [...] It could be some kind of pre-approved “unclassified shape” which is used for diagnostics and model verification, for example. There are other examples of this kind of thing that the labs have used over time. That is entirely a possibility.

However, he then goes on to immediately reject this "obvious" answer, because he thinks the well-known schematics of fission-fusion bombs give the appearance of a classified shape, and because he feels it is "provocative" for a government weapons lab to show a mock up of a well-known schematic in one of their publications. Those positions seem very weak to me.

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

#44

Post by taneliv »

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…

Even so, it would be very unusual if I understand the author correctly:

> ... at least historically, the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor organizations have frowned on disinformation and misinformation for other very practical reasons. If you release a lie, you run the risk of someone noticing it is a lie, which can draw more attention to the reality. And even misinformation/inaccuracy can put “brackets” around the possibilities of truth. The goal of these organizations is to leave a total blank in the areas that they don’t want people to know about, and misinformation/disinformation/inaccuracy is something other than a total blank.

In other words, the author expected to see a previously familiar schematic or nothing. This is clearly not nothing, and also not a familiar schematic, hence the surprise.

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

#45

Post by matthewmcg »

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…

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 Defense for Nuclear Matters.

Two circles in a box, maybe inside of a reentry vehicle. That’s it. Nothing that gives any actual sense of size, location, materials, physicality.”

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

#46

Post by eesmith »

lupusreal wrote: post #34
eesmith wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except as the author commented: > Someone reminded me of something I had seen years ago: the British nuclear program at Aldermaston, when it has published on its own computer modeling in the past, used a sort of “bomb mockup” that looks far more deliberately “fake” than this Sandia one. I offer this up as what I would think is a more “safe” approach than something that looks, even superficially, like a “real” seconda…

The author doesn't convincingly rule out the possibility that this is what it is. The other possible answers seem less plausible than it being a fake shape for software testing that happens to look fancier than past test shapes.

The author wasn't trying to be convincing. "I’m just surprised the DOE would release any image that gave really any implied graphical structure of a thermonuclear secondary, even if it is clearly schematic and meant to be only somewhat representative. It’s more than they usually allow!"

My reply was to point out that the author discussed issues related to HelloNurse's suggestion.

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

#47

Post by sidewndr46 »

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…

Given the nature of nuclear weapons work, isn't anything presented by someone basically speculation? If he actually had the information he wouldn't be able to talk about it. He seems to have been involved at the government level in the storage and handling of weapons, not production of them.

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

#48

Post by gnfargbl »

matthewmcg wrote: post #45
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…

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!

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

#49

Post by jiggawatts »

Reminds me of another design secret that leaked out because someone published a paper titled something like "X-ray crystallography of Lithium Deuteride under high pressure."

People very quickly figured out that this was the source of the D-T fuel in fusion part of the bomb instead of cryogenic D-T liquid. Lithium Deuteride is nasty stuff, but it's a storable solid. When bombarded with neutrons from the fission primary, the Lithium splits and forms tritium, which then combines with the deuterium that was the other half of the crystal.

The reason the usage was obvious (from the title alone!) is that very few chemists would care about any property of Lithium Hydride, which is dangerous to handle and has few practical uses. Lithium Deuteride is unheard of in analytical chemistry, and its crystallography under high pressure is totally uninteresting to anyone... except physicists working on atomic weapons.

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

#50

Post by defrost »

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…

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 embedded historians and archivists who toed the line on handling and preserving materials and held long meetings on what to release | not release and when.

There are even a few DoE employed HN users here who know their areas of expertise and comment right up to the point where they shut up (an often shut down | change accounts) - they don't say what they shouldn't but they have chatted until they don't anymore .. which is interesting in itself.

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