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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?

#51

Post by bitexploder »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #47
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.

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.

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

#52

Post by ajsnigrutin »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #36

Some people are confused why this could be a big deal. An analogy: on GitHub, if you echo a GitHub access token in an action’s log, it will be automatically censored. This post would be like noticing that someone’s action step is just named ghp_1ae27h… and that the name isn’t censored, and speculating on what that says about the token-censorship algorithm

[flagged]

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

#53

Post by xattt »

bitexploder wrote: post #51
sidewndr46 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

You might have the theory, you might have an understanding of the materials involved, but you’re missing the way they fit together.

Assembly of the actual warhead could be aided by the OP diagram.

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

#54

Post by aeonik »

cm2187 wrote: post #35
HelloNurse wrote: post #19

This thing could be a test object that doesn't work as an actual nuclear warhead but is similar enough to validate the discussed software: real-world crash tests match software simulations, and being accurate at simulating the dummy is a guarantee of being accurate at simulating classified weapon designs.

No this is an espresso machine!

A snow cone maker!

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

#55

Post by gnfargbl »

defrost wrote: post #50
gnfargbl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#58

Post by gorjusborg »

bitexploder wrote: post #51
sidewndr46 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Which is probably why the U.S. looks out for uranium enrichment.
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