[math-fun] highly enriched uranium (HEU) improvised nuclear bomb
From an email I just received that was signed by the governor of California and William J Perry
"A quantity of HEU the size of a basketball would be sufficient to make an improvised nuclear bomb that had the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb and was small enough to fit into a delivery van. Such a bomb, delivered by van (or fishing boat) and detonated in one of our cities, could essentially destroy that city, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties, as well as major social, political, and economic disruptions." My question: is this really true? I mean, supposing a small group of people accomplished getting that much HEU, is it really just a matter of "improvisation" to detonate it? I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that detonating it involved some serious engineering chops, especially if you dont want to kill or fatally irradiate yourself in the attempt. -- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/
On 5/19/2016 5:42 PM, Thane Plambeck wrote:
From an email I just received that was signed by the governor of California and William J Perry
"A quantity of HEU the size of a basketball would be sufficient to make an improvised nuclear bomb that had the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb and was small enough to fit into a delivery van. Such a bomb, delivered by van (or fishing boat) and detonated in one of our cities, could essentially destroy that city, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties, as well as major social, political, and economic disruptions."
My question: is this really true? I mean, supposing a small group of people accomplished getting that much HEU, is it really just a matter of "improvisation" to detonate it? I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that detonating it involved some serious engineering chops, especially if you dont want to kill or fatally irradiate yourself in the attempt.
What takes serious engineering is getting explosive yield. You have to take subcritical masses and slam them together very quickly into a supercritical mass, before the chain reaction can blow them apart. Otherwise you get a very low yield explosion and what is effectively a "dirty bomb". Engineering goes into designing neutron reflectors on the surface to increase the yield and in designing the chemical implosion system to assemble the critical mass. But it wouldn't be that hard to get a low yield explosion - and I think a dirty bomb might even be more effective as a terrorist weapon. Irradiating yourself isn't a big problem. Just be careful not to get a critical mass together. The hard part is getting enough highly enriched uranium. Brent
Hello, this is my simple opinion. You do not need to complicate things by trying to make an actual nuclear bomb. You just need a very high explosive aside of a couple of barrels of nuclear waste then : if this explodes it radiates dirty products over a city making it inhabitable and causing many deaths, maybe a thousand. No fancy calculations needed, I am afraid. too easy ? What is the worst comes after : no picture needed. I hope this will never happen. Simon Plouffe
Here is the whole letter from Brown and Perry http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-j-perry/a-call-for-russia-and-the_b_99... On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 6:21 PM, Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
this is my simple opinion.
You do not need to complicate things by trying to make an actual nuclear bomb. You just need a very high explosive aside of a couple of barrels of nuclear waste then : if this explodes it radiates dirty products over a city making it inhabitable and causing many deaths, maybe a thousand.
No fancy calculations needed, I am afraid. too easy ?
What is the worst comes after : no picture needed.
I hope this will never happen.
Simon Plouffe _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/
I think it's pretty clear, based on what we know about fission reactors, that making a fission device that does tremendous damage is primarily getting enough fissionable material close enough together to generate a runaway reaction. Turning that into a massive explosion (as opposed to just a big mess) probably requires some engineering, but I'll bet much of the information you need is fairly easily available. Doing this without killing or irradiating yourself may be secondary to some individuals. I believe some of the early tests were much more powerful than predicted, indicating that you may get more than you expected even by accident. E=mc^2 is a potent reaction. On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Thane Plambeck <tplambeck@gmail.com> wrote:
From an email I just received that was signed by the governor of California and William J Perry
"A quantity of HEU the size of a basketball would be sufficient to make an improvised nuclear bomb that had the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb and was small enough to fit into a delivery van. Such a bomb, delivered by van (or fishing boat) and detonated in one of our cities, could essentially destroy that city, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties, as well as major social, political, and economic disruptions."
My question: is this really true? I mean, supposing a small group of people accomplished getting that much HEU, is it really just a matter of "improvisation" to detonate it? I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that detonating it involved some serious engineering chops, especially if you dont want to kill or fatally irradiate yourself in the attempt.
-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/ _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- -- http://cube20.org/ -- [ <http://golly.sf.net/>Golly link suppressed; ask me why] --
participants (5)
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Brent Meeker -
Dan Asimov -
Simon Plouffe -
Thane Plambeck -
Tom Rokicki