Why someone is calling a chart/diagram a logo is the bigger mystery here. Mockups of things exist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41464358>
Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
61–70 of 227 posts
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#62Earlier 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.
I remember rumors of the theft of the W88 (mentioned in the parent article) during the Clinton presidency.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#63Earlier 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.
There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory.
That said, if it was that easy, I'm sure we would've had terrorist attacks with nukes already. Or if terrorism was that big an issue. I don't know if it hasn't happened yet because technology and three-lettered agencies are doing their job right though.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#64Putting a weapon of mass destruction in a logo is tasteless. It’s like advertising with cans of mustard gas.
You’ll love the NRO’s mission patches. https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/9/11895496/nro-spy-weird-mis...
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#65That 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
a product logo, according to the title, although that may be a hint of editorialising from the author.
It really is, it’s just much more graphically detailed than the usual product logo, probably because it was designed by nuclear weapon designers and not by professional graphic designers.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There was once an article in a pop sci magazine 25 odd years ago about how to build a nuke in a house; basically a pipe / barrel from the attic to the basement, a concave bit of plutonium or the right kind of uranium in the basement encased in a good carrier like concrete, and a convex matching part at the top of the barrel. Explosives behind the top one, launch the one towards the other, ????, nuke. In theory. That…
Casting, machining or welding plutonium into the right shapes and purities without killing your self, or some of the other exotic metals, without killing your self or making your neighbours sick in a sub 1-3 week horizon is incredibly challenging. The exact geometries you need to achieve aren’t easily available either neither is measuring is you achieved them without again killing your self.
Getting a dirty fizzle is a lot easier which is why people are afraid of dirty weapons by terrorists.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The tone of this kind of article has to be nice and diplomatic, and mistakes need to remain hypothetical and attributed to the largest possible organizational unit (DARPA having surprising policies, not the mechanical finite element simulation software team spreading data they consider harmless).
The second object that appears near the end of the article looks like a simplified version of the first with more basic shapes, as if someone was asked by someone else to draw a less suggestive replacement of the original (possibly with the sole purpose of appearing in slides); in a natural design process the cruder design would have appeared first.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#68Say if an adversary with a small nuclear program that hasn’t yet achieved a weapon got a hold of this, what kind of impact would that make?
They would be in possession of an image. It is hard to understand what the author is hand-wringing about. It is not that nobody knows how these weapons are supposed to work. The real barrier is that to obtain the materials necessary you need a big-ish industrial base and if you do that that leaves signatures the relevant agencies can detect. It is not even clear if when he speaks about "safe" is he talking about bein…
The "large industrial base" is required primarily to highly enrich uranium (or plutonium).
A modern fusion bomb requires much less of that than the initial fission bombs.
So I don't know how much a state actor could infer from an image like that, if we assume it's a schematic of an actual bomb.
But it's just not true that someone in possession of detailed plans for how to construct a bomb isn't put into a much better position. They'll need a much smaller amount of fissionable material than they otherwise would with a cruder design.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#69Say if an adversary with a small nuclear program that hasn’t yet achieved a weapon got a hold of this, what kind of impact would that make?
There is the fission stage and the fusion stage. The fission stage in this image is not well represented. It is generally known how to make a fission stage similar to the “Fat Man” device but the “Fat Man” device is larger than the whole warhead with both a fission and fusion stage that fits on a Minuteman 3.
The fission stage in that warhead has numerous refinements that help miniaturize it, for instance the implosion is probably not spherical so it can fit in the pointy end of the warhead. A really refined modern weapon is packed with details like that.
Re: Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
#70Earlier 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…
Read the article?