Nuclear Fuel How-To

ATMosby writes "The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." From the article: "Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes. It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission."

Comments

Fission? No kidding!

[sjbe]

When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission.

Thanks for clearing that up for us...

So?

[0racle]

Big deal, my high school physics textbook had all this information as well.

I wonder how many people are going to think this is some sort of threat to 'national security.'

Re:So?

[grasshoppa]

I wonder how many people are going to think this is some sort of threat to 'national security.'

I wonder how many of those will be our beloved chimp for president.

yeah yeah, mod me flamebait

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

A chimp for a president???? That's the most insulting thing I've ever read.

- A chimp

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the founding fathers who had a problem with living in a colony of England and just packed up and moved to Mexico... oh wait, that's not what they did.

Re:So?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Your disgusting.

His disgusting what?

Grow up and get some respect.

Um...I think you meant to say show some respect...

If you have a problem with this country save up and by a one-way ticket to somewhere else.

No. I think I'll stay here in MY country and work for change. I'm sure you and the rest of your neo-conservative fascist mouth-breathing ilk would love it if people with ideologies slightly different from yours just ran away, but sorry...we're not going to make it that easy for you.

To sum up, you are a moron.
Log off before you hurt yourself.

Re:So?

[AKAImBatman]

Big deal, my high school physics textbook had all this information as well.

Actually, your high school physics book probably has *more* information. This "in-depth article" is nothing more than a few graphs and a description.

That being said, nuclear fission technology is stupidly simple in it theoretical foundations. Once one is able to build an atomic pile (demonstrating sufficient purity of U235), it's only a short period of time until a gun-type A-Bomb can be made. All you need is two sub-critical masses of U235 that add up to a critical mass. Mount one mass in a stationary (and strong!) holder. Take the other piece and mount in some sort of gun. The more force the gun can impart on the second piece, the better. Fire the first piece at the second, and viola! You're dead!

Ermm... I mean... you can see a pretty light show from the U235 compressing into a super-critical bundle.

Nuclear reactors and Implosion bombs are a bit more difficult, but not beyond any country with sufficient industrial capability. This article from the magazine "The Progressive" tells you how to build a hydrogen bomb. Good luck on that, though. Implosion bombs aren't too bad with computer modelling, but H-Bombs are REALLY, REALLY tricky.

Of course, if a Slashdotter with no formal training in nuclear science can desribe how bombs are built, is there any question as to why nuclear materials are carefully controlled?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/Fire the first piece at the second/Fire the second piece at the first/g

Re:So?

[Rei]

I'm wondering why slashdot seems so impressed by this; this is all common knowlege (and very incomplete for the public domain). I mean, using language "This is then purified in a chemical process and reconstituted in a solid form known as "yellow cake" "? "A chemical process"? Can they get more vague? Why not just state some of the processes, like dissolution of the ore in strong acids (phosphoric, sulphuric, or nitric)? Heck, I once ran into a paper that discussed proper methods for manufacture of appropriate corrosion-resistant seals for gas centrifuges. :P

Here we go again: "converted into a gas, uranium hexafluoride". Why not just say how hex is produced - it is dissolved in nitric acid to produce uranyl nitrate, reacted with ammonia to produce ammonium diuranate, reduced with hydrogen to produce UO2, then converted with HF to UF4 (which is a nice storage method, because it can be readily converted to either hex, ceramics, or metal). You react the UF4 with fluorine to produce UF6.

Just stating the chemical pathway isn't giving away any sort of secrets; this is all public domain. The technical challenges are in setting up a large scale refining process, and not getting caught doing it, because large quantities of many involved chemicals (for example hydrofluoric acid) are monitored.

They only mention two enrichment methods (gas diffision and gas centrifuge), and ignore some of the newer methods in development (I'm rather fond of the LIS (Laser Isotope Separation) methods; they take advantage of the fact that the different isotopes of uranium ionize differently from different wavelengths of light. AVLIS works on uranium gas ionization, while MLIS works by encouraging the selective disassociation of U235 hex. There's a couple other methods in development as well.

Even what they mention of gas diffusion and gas centrifuges is vague. For example, the whole world was reading two years ago about the controversy over the "aluminum tubes" - the centrifuge rotors are flow-formed from tubes and welded to a central shaft, which spins on a fine bearing at the base and is magneticly suspended at the top. Because of the high forces on the rotors, you need high grade alloys. Iraq never had used aluminum - its imported designs called for maraging steel, and the aluminum was ill-suited for welding as well. This was all over the news - where were the editors then?

I could easily keep on going, but I think the point is made - why are the editors impressed by this article? It's nothing - they've clearly never bothered googling for uranium enrichment before.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That being said, nuclear fission technology is stupidly simple in it theoretical foundations."

I don't know which books on nuclear engineering you've been reading, but mine are not stupidly simple. Just because the concepts are sometimes easy to grasp, does not mean that the procedure that created the concept is simple. There is a reason why most of the great physicists of the last century studied nuclear physics, and it is not because it is simple.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are such a karma whore.

Re:So?

[AKAImBatman]

My favorite method is the Buckets method of separating the UHF in your backyard. Quick (yeah, right), easy (if you are REALLY strong), and safe (you'll be dead when you're done)! What could be better? ;-)

Re:So?

[Rei]

The tough thing about implosion bombs is getting a uniform shockwave. This requires high purity explosives that behave exactly the way you want, every time, high-predictability capacitors, and very time-precise triggering mechanisms. Parts that can be used in the triggering mechanisms (such as krytrons) are harder to come by.

Such capacitors and explosives are within the reach of a state like Iran (and Iraq claimed to have produced them before the first Gulf War), Krytrons, however, use beta from Ni-63 to help keep the gas in them ionized (to allow for a faster arc discharge), so they take more effort.

Re:So?

[saider]

Remember, Communication 101 states that when communicating with the masses, your should target an 8th grade audience. Hence the lack of good information in the media.

We don't want Johnny Disadvantaged to be unable to understand the news.

Re:So?

[Intron]

They could get jobs?

Re:So?

[AKAImBatman]

Nuclear Engineering != Nuclear Weapons

Building nuclear weapons is stupidly simply from a theoretical standpoint. Understanding *why* they work, and developing new engineering concepts isn't so simple.

Basically, it's the traditional "once someone has done it, it's easy" conundrum. Columbus and the Egg is a particularly good example of this situation, even if the story is fiction.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, by why is "mouth breathing" supposed to be an insult. What if you have chronic nasal passage issues and are unable to properly breathe through the nose. Soes that somehow make you an idiot? Is air breathed through the mouth of lesser quality and somehow less able to profice oxygen to the brain?

Just curious, because according to my dentist I'm a mouth breather and I guess I never thought of myself as flawed because of it.

Re:So?

[shotfeel]

I'm wondering why slashdot seems so impressed by this; this is all common knowlege

Yeah, I was thinking most /.'s learned this around 2nd grade.

Now if it was a "Dating Hot Babes How-To"...

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

" Nuclear Engineering != Nuclear Weapons"

Does your theoretical standpoint include tossing as much Plutonium onto a pile until it goes boom? Or is the only theoretical standpoint that you have is that the concept of a chain reaction is simple.

If nuclear weapons are so theoretically simple, tell me why they need a beryllium source, vice using intrinsic neutrons from spontaneous fission (or other reactions). Why is a reflector needed if the bomb is designed to burn through from the center out? What fraction of the fuel is actually burned? Why are the specific energies of high energy neutrons released from fission more important than the average? How is the fuel orientated to minimize the effect of gammas heating the fuel?

No, the answer is that it appears simple because you do not know the details.

Re:So?

[Rei]

Answers:

1) Does it matter?
2) Does it matter?
3) Does it matter?
4) Does it matter?

The "why" is irrelevant the second time around; only the "what" matters. That was the parent's point.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want Johnny Disadvantaged to be unable to understand the news.

No, no, no. You're waaay misinformed. Johnny Disadvantaged doesn't matter anymore. It's that we don't want Johnny Middle-Class to know we're screwing him senseless and cents-less for power and profit. Ssssh!

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

Iraq got nuclear training from Pakistan's AQ Khan during the 1980s, while the US beefed up Hussein's rudimentary WMD program. And Pakistan got its krytrons from the US at that time, too.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes

Otherwise the bomb will fissile vice boom. You miss the point. The details aren't some module you can hide away and pretend you understand the big picture. The details are integrated into every aspect of operation. This isn't OOP. This is your dirty assembly code, where if you don't pay attention to details, it doesn't work.

Re:So?

[Rei]

That's not the case with a gun-type weapon. Colliding two pieces of >90% enriched U-235, (with alternating spheres of polonium and berylium the center of the device to be crushed by the high explosives), at high speeds, will give you a nuclear explosion (even if low yield), even if you don't know why.

Amateurs who don't know much at all about particle physics build Farnsworth Fusors for fun. All you need to know to build something is a design. Physics doesn't care if you know why it works.

Re:So?

[JJ]

the NY Times article you cite doesn't say the US beefed up his chemical weapons programme. It says it ignored evidence of it while helping Iraq with certain military issues (like giving them satelitte photos of recent Iranian troop movements.)

Citing the NYTimes is as likely to be unbiased as CBS News or Newsweek.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal, my high school physics textbook had all this information as well. ...and a disclaimer that the Theory of Atomicism is only a theory, and must be considered in context with other equally valid theories such as the Four Elements Theory.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

All those that read that article will have their IP address recorded and sent to DHS and added to their watch list.

I wonder of /. will get a supena to release this to DHS.

Re:So?

[a3217055]

I think the BBC will be shut down or rather retract there story and have it said that.
Nuclear fusion reactore running on gum drops can now have there fuel recycled to make weapons using marshmallows and humus. Only one in 7 gum drops out of a 1000 are light enought to get above the marshmallow and humus mixture for actual usage.

Re:So?

[ryusen]

I wonder how many people are going to think this is some sort of threat to 'national security.'
Probably only homeland security, the state department, and the president. in other words, no one that knows anythign abotu national security *smirk*

Re:So?

[compro01]

i wouldn't think that terrorists who want to blow something up would have to worry about all that. the basic princible of lobbing 2 chunks of enriched uranium at each other at a suffiently high speed (basic uranium gun design used on little boy (hiroshima bomb)) will work fine for them. they don't need it to make 10 terratonnes of boom. a few hundred tonnes of boom will do nicely. they don't have to worry about radation or using up all the fuel it can just be a dirty bomb.

Re:So?

[compro01]

just adding to what i said, they wouldn't need to actually cause that much damage. the real thing would be the fear instilled e.g. "OMG, THE TERORISTS HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!!" etc.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

That article merely scratches the surface, showing the hearty Rumsfeld/Saddam handshake video. The truth is that the US was beefing up Iraq, while officially denying it - which backfired when they invaded Kuwait. And beefing up Iran, while officially denying it, after they beat the US out of their country with our hostages. Some say it was a good covert policy, to set two belligerent threats to the US against each other. But it backfired then and now, with both built-up countries threatening our security, more every time Rumsfeld's crew gets to "help".

As for "bias", do you have an actual contradiction of the facts? Which "unbiased" source do you get your facts from? When you say "CBS", I expect you're referring to their simulated memos story last year, the facts of which were corroborated by the secretary who wrote the actual memos? And with "Newsweek", is that the story last week of Guantanamo prisoner abuse by Koran desecration, which is further corroborated by Pentagon reports going back to at latest 2002? Or are you referring to all the stories those outlets published, including the NY Times, promoting the Bush/Rumsfeld stories of Iraqi WMD, sending us to war in Iraq? All based on the uncorroborated "intelligence" of then-anonymous sources, revealed to be alternately the liar called "Screwball", or Chalabi, the Iranian agent?

Re:So?

[Dr. Evil]

What size of a sphere? How thick is each layer? How powerful should the explosives be? how do you shape the charges? How pure do the explosives need to be in order to behave predictably? How does temperature affect them? How do you time the explosives to the triggering of the gun? How do you time the explosives so they detonate simultaneously? How does the gun work? rails? powder? Will that affect the shaped charges?

If anything is wrong, you have a very expensive dirty bomb, and you can't exactly test the thing, so you can't really know if it's as easy as you say it is.

Re:So?

[AKAImBatman]

Does your theoretical standpoint include tossing as much Plutonium onto a pile until it goes boom?

Lord, I hope not. It's not going to go "boom", it's going to get REALLY hot and burn through a few things. Anybody standing near by would be wise to back off.

tell me why they need a beryllium source, vice using intrinsic neutrons from spontaneous fission

Because nuclear devices are dangerous? Gun type devices are no longer used in most applications because they're far too easy to detonate. Any accidental detonation of the internal munitions could result in the device being triggered. As a result, nuclear scientists prefer to have a controllable nuetron source for safety. i.e. A neutron source "trigger".

Why is a reflector needed if the bomb is designed to burn through from the center out?

Are we talking implosion or H-Bomb? The reflector on H-Bombs is a bit trickier. It's designed to temporarily withstand the power of the atomic detonation in order to compress the dueterium/lithium into a fusion event. The shaping of the reflector is EXTREMELY important to the success of the fusion event. That's part of the reason why H-Bombs are so tricky. (Even more so than an implosion weapon.)

On implosion weapons, the reflectors are designed to direct the charges inward toward the plutonium core. Without this outer shell, the bomb would fizzle. (This fact was used by some movie, who's name I no longer remember, to disable the "backpack nuke" by prying a plate free from the bomb.)

Reflectors are also used to help maintain the materials in a subcritical state.

What fraction of the fuel is actually burned?

The goal is "as much as possible", although the performance of weapons rarely reaches that degree. Off hand, I don't remember how much is usually burned, but I believe it's a fairly low amount.

Why are the specific energies of high energy neutrons released from fission more important than the average?

Ite all comes down to cross-section and capture ratios. Unlike the model often shown to the public, the nucleus of an atom is not directly "smashed" apart. The neutrons are instead captured by the atom. This destablizes the atom and causes it to split. Slower moving neutrons are more easily captured, and thus tend to be desirable in a reaction. However, since high speed neutrons are more common, they must be slowed down with some form of moderator. As I understand it, this is accomplished in bombs by making the material into a paste. Fast breeder reactors use these fast neutrons directly to create plutonium.

How is the fuel orientated to minimize the effect of gammas heating the fuel?

Off the top of my head? Dunno. Google has answers to this, but I believe it's something that can be easily found through experimentation.

Did I pass? Hopefully I understood all the questions well enough. :-)

Seriously, are you suggesting that even with access to the basic nuclear information, plus the publically available equations, nuclear weapons are too difficult for most counties to build? Because the sheer number of counties who have them would seem to suggest otherwise.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering why slashdot seems so impressed by this

I guess I must have read too many spy novels, the first thing I thought of was "oh, are we trying to up the pagerank of this page to make it a honeypot for terrorists?". Yeah, I probably had too many Flemmings.

But then again... :)

Re:So?

[Rei]

So your issue is really just how detailed are available designs, then? Ok, lets use a public description of Little Boy (the first one I ran into - much better designs are available):

64,1kg of HEU (80% average enrichment). The bullet was a cyllindrical stack of U-235 rings each 10cm wide and 16 cm long, containing 25.6kg total (6 rings). The stack was backed by a tungsten carbide disk and steel backplate, all within a 1/16th inch thick steel can to form a complete projectile. The target was a hollow cylinder 16 cm long and wide, weighing 38.4 kg. It was fabricated of two rings that were inserted into the bomb separately. The bullet contained 89% enriched HEU; the target the rest of the uranium.

The bullet was encased in a boron "safety sabot" to help prevent accidents; there was also a plug on the target. When fired, these would strip off. You could easily omit such safety features if you were unconcerned with safety.

The tamper assembly was thick tungsten carbide surrounded by a steel forging, 60cm wide, with a combined mass of 2300kg. A hole was bored in the forging to insert the tamper and the target; the hole was threaded to allow secure attachment of the gun. At the back of the hole, past the target, there was space for one or more polonium initiators (I can dig up several polonium initiator designs for you if you would like; Little Boy used four very inefficient ones - the bomb would have worked without an initiator, and the decision to use an initiator wasn't even established till March 1945).

The gun was a 3" antiaircraft gun, 6.5" wide, 6 feet long, bored out to 4", weighing 450kg, with a breech block of 34kg. Standard cordite propellant was used, to achieve a 300m/s (slow) velocity. Of course, given how unsafe the Little Boy design was, even dropping the device hard enough could have given some significant (even full) yield.

The complete weapon was 126 inches long, 28 inches in diameter, and 8900 pounds. Need a diagram?

Note that being "exact" doesn't matter; Little Boy was a very conservative design, and allows for very large tolerances of error. The worst you'll get is a lower yield.

P.S. - I found this information in 5 minutes. Imagine someone actually dedicated to the cause of building a nuclear weapon...

Re:So?

[AKAImBatman]

tell me why they need a beryllium source, vice using intrinsic neutrons from spontaneous fission

I was thinking about this one, and I think I misunderstood the question. Crushing polonium/beryllium together provides a wash of nuetron particles, thus providing a powerful trigger for the detonation.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics doesn't care if you know why it works.
...and it also hates when you anthropomorphize it.

Re:So?

[DuckofDeath87]

Don't you know that you are suppose to include a wikipedia link when you mentioned Farnsworth Fusors!
I swear, that should be added to the /. faq.

Re:So?

[JJ]

The US never collaborated in Iraqi or Iranian WMD efforts. At the time of the handshake, Rumsfeld was a private businessman and Iraq was a legitimate trading partner for processed food and non-lethal chemicals, like Rumsfeld was peddling. The US never sent or sold weapons or any material which could be readily converted to military or WMD usage, unlike the Russians, French or Germans (who truly did beef up the Iraqi military.)

As for Iran, pre-1979 the US supplied Iran with a great deal of military hardware. Post-1979, the amount of "To Be Destroyed" military hardware traded to Iran would fill fewer than three railroad cars. If that's "beefing up" then the USA also "beefs up" the mighty military power of Fiji.

Bias. The simulated memos which anybody thinking even vaguely critically could see were "typed" on a modern word processor. The secretary says the memos reflect the general attitude of the CO, his son says they do not.

The Newsweek article has been retracted, the military reports 5 minor acts of inapproriateness toward the Koran, only three intentional. So twice somebody accidently dropped it and three times non-Muslim interrogators removed the book from the hands of a Muslim. Hardly the equivalent of flushing it down the toilet.

Face it, the LEFT BIASED PRESS has egg all over their collective faces and only people with no ability to think for themselves should believe them anymore.

Re:So?

[fnj]

Colliding two pieces of >90% enriched U-235 ... at high speeds, will give you a nuclear explosion (even if low yield) ...

I would hardly call around 15,000 tons of TNT "low yield" and neither would the inhabitants of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.

Re:So?

[Rei]

For a nuclear weapon, it is; however, you can get lower yield than in Hiroshima (you can lower your yield all the way down to just a burst of radiation). In fact, there are what are colloquially called "dial-a-nuke"s - you can actually custom-set the yield without having to take apart the weapon.

Re:So?

[myowntrueself]

"I could easily keep on going, but I think the point is made - why are the editors impressed by this article? It's nothing - they've clearly never bothered googling for uranium enrichment before."

Wow, what can I say?

I bow to your superior nuclear-fu, son!

;)

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you have so much information and not have a clue?

In one breath, you talk about Rumsfeld as a private citizen, helping give WMD tech to other countries. Can't you follow that with the fact that now he is part of the government, and essentially rewarded for arming these countries?

Does it give you whiplash to turn so quickly from a fact to a fiction?

The rest is just double-plus wrong. Your thought-speak is good.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

Rumsfeld was Reagan's envoy to Iraq.

The Reagan arms shipments to Iran might have reached a value of $82B. Even the smaller, officially admitted figures account for TOW missiles illegally shipped through Israel, which were strategically valuable to Iran in its Iraq war. That's what "Iran/Contra" was (half) about, but I suppose you've got some kind of "legitimate" explanation that excuses that illegal guns/drugs/policy scam.

The memos were confirmed by the secretary who was in the office at the time of the events, while the denial comes from someone connected only by relation, speaking in partisan "defense" for a dead person who acted independently, according to their conscience. Witness vs. self-interested hearsay, but your "bias" sensitivity is oneway, at best.

Newsweek's retraction acknowledged only that it was irresponsible to cite only a single, anonymous Pentagon source before publishing. Of course, Newsweek let the Pentagon review the story for days, without complaint, before publishing it. Only when the White House blamed the story for Afghan riots did Newsweek retract, though even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the riots weren't caused by the story. While the military reports several acts of desecration ("inappropriateness"? talk about "bias"), including reports that they set of riots, and that a Koran was put into a toilet deliberately. Stories corroborated by independent people in the prisons, who had no way of synchronizing their stories. In prisons where other prisoners were being beaten, raped, electrocuted, and humiliated - "tortured" is the word, if you can forgive the bias towards "truth". I guess that the torture must be the product of our "left biased press". Which bias led them to promote Bush's lies about WMD, and Iraq's threat to the US, as much as possible. Screwball and Chalabi, Bush's uncorroborated anonymous sources, aren't biased, though - their WMD lies are true, right?
Many of these facts are reported by "left biased press", so I'm sure you'll ignore them. You dislike the conclusions drawn by the messenger, so the facts they document are irrelevant. Of course, you can't reply with an example of an "unbiased" source, because you prefer the rightwing propaganda you repeat. Which comes from the president and his execs, so it must all be true, right? Who needs the press, when the president can go around the filter, and tell us all the truth.

Re:So?

[LWATCDR]

For a gun type bomb the initiators are not required. As long as you can keep it assembled for around a second you will still get a good yield.

Re:So?

[Rei]

You don't need one, but they help :) Little boy had four small polonium initiators, but they were sort of a last minute addition.

Re:So?

[ahdeoz]

"Common Dreams", the source you cite, is a euphamism for the "Common Dream" shared by Muslim terrorists and radical leftists. Factor it out, the shared denominator isn't 42. It isn't medical marijuana, and it isn't getting "under God" stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it, there is no left biased press in the US. The US press bias is spread about equally between centre-right and extreme right.

It could have saved a lot of lives if the press wasn't biased so much to the fascist regime. However, it appears journalistic integrity is not as important as money.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

Thank you for demonstrating the insanity of the vast rightwing conspiracy against America. Which is the only thing those items you mention have in common - in your mind, weirdo. No wonder the Republicans are glad to have an army of zombies like you. Maybe if you went outside sometime, or talked in person to another human being, you might start making sense. Please put down the gun, and step away from the ledge, before you hurt someone.

Re:So?

[Antony.S]

The Peacemaker

Re:So?

[krelian]

Sounds so simple when you say it liek this.

Re:So?

[kd5ujz]

If something is wrong, you SHOULD try to fix it, not just accept the things that are wrong, or give up and move somewhere else.

Re:So?

[kd5ujz]

I think the guy is saying that it can be done simply, but with unknown effects, if any. Its like a 14 year old with an estes rocket an a .410 shotgun shell. You can put it in the top of the rocket, throw an E engine in the rocket, and shoot it up in the air. This CAN be a dangerous weapon, but without knowing the impulse time, wind, weigh, thurst, or any number of variables, where it lands is just an uneducated guess. You CAN make nitroglycerin with nitric acid, glycerin, and nothing more( including knowldge of the stability/flash points), but that does not make it a good idea. I dont belive this guys idea will work, but who knows. It would be damn hard to model the effects of a plutonium pellet being flung out of a sling shot at a plutonium sphere.

Re:So?

[kd5ujz]

There is a good book ( The radioactive Boy Scout) That tells of a scout working on a merit badge for his eagle scout rank. He built a small breader reactor in his back yard. Pretty good book, but this article will highlight most of the interesting stuff.


Dangerous labs link

Re:So?

[zerus]

It's not simple at all, there's a reason why it took billions of 1940 dollars to develop a nuclear weapons program. There were thousands of scientists and engineers working on it. There was nothing simple about the initial creation of it except for saying that mass can equal energy, and that in itself isn't inherently simple. They had to create a large number of nucear theories which took quite a bit of time because the underlying theories were still in their infancy not to mention the lack of computers. You can't simply take uranium from the ground and put it next to another piece of ore and expect it to blow up or even go critical. They had to create diffusion theory to model the entire system to see if it would go critical. In addition to knowing how to build separation plants, they had to build chemical refineries, design various solvent extraction processes, water reclaimation plants, high and low level liquid waste storage facilities, the list goes on. If you combined just about every type of engineering (nuclear, mechanical, chemical, civil, etc), then you might be able to grasp what a process goes into creating these weapons. There is a reason why people don't just make a nuclear bomb in a year or two. There was nothing simple about it, and if you think there is, maybe you need to be the graduate student instead of me.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the mechanics are simple, is the big problem in bomb making the part about obtaining this enriched U-235?

Re:So?

[batquux]

Really? Wow! My high school science textbooks only had four elements: earth, air, fire, and water...which explains why we only used them as a unit of mass.

Re:So?

[wronskyMan]

He built a small breader reactor in his back yard.
Usually people keep their breader reactors in the kitchen - easier to coat the chicken and fish that way.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha. you must have gone to one of them Christian fundamentalist faith schools.

Re:So?

[pipingguy]

Perhaps the design has been so obfuscated over the years that there actually *is* security by obfuscation. After all, how many armchair theorists/PhDs have actually triggered a nuclear explosion?

Re:So?

[pipingguy]

UncleAl, is that you?

Re:So?

[kd5ujz]

Ehh, it was deep fried. Overlooked breeder. Ma spelin ident da bestest

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow..... chimps posting to slashdot. What has the world come to??

Re:So?

[GPF(BSOD)]

Are you 14? Seems so. "Oh, someone disagrees with my very very important ideas! Mommy said I was the most important little boy in the entire world, and she was right!"

Re:So?

[js7a]

You are absolutly right. Any administration which admits to beating several detainees to death while they are busy losing $9 billion would never have time to desecrate the Koran.

What's the point of putting the Koran in the toilet when it's just as easy to give th prisoner a swirly?

Why do these liberals hate America?

Re:So?

[Thomas Shaddack]

I'm sure you and the rest of your neo-conservative fascist mouth-breathing ilk would love it if people with ideologies slightly different from yours just ran away, but sorry...we're not going to make it that easy for you.

They don't really mean it. The true face of "take it or leave it" proclaimers shown during the Viet Nam war; remember their rapid change of opinion when people started leaving for Canada instead of opting for being drafted and sent to the meat-grinder.

Re:So?

[Thomas Shaddack]

Fast breeder reactors use these fast neutrons directly to create plutonium.

I thought breeder reactors use plutonium as fuel, and uranium as shields/reflectors? The neutrons captured by U238 then transform it to Pu239 (and later Pu240, which does not make neutrons when split so it is unsuitable for weapons) (well, U239, which then undergoes two spontanneous fissions to Np239 and then Pu239). Am I wrong?

How is the fuel orientated to minimize the effect of gammas heating the fuel?

Isn't gamma heating relevant more for thermonuclear weapons? I don't think the effects of gamma heating are fast enough to affect the fission stage; even then, you can't orient the fuel other way than strictly symmetrically. (And yes, that's why there's the uranium shield between the fission stage and the fusion stage, and why it is perpendicular to the fission stage.) Please correct me if I am wrong, my memory is rusty.

Re:So?

[AJWM]

What size of a sphere?

It can vary, but six inches is good.

How thick is each layer?

Layer of what? The Po/Be? Foil is fine. You want them to mix and emit neutrons. You can put a thicker layer of Be around the whole thing as a reflector if you like.

How powerful should the explosives be?

It's a gun. Use gunpowder.

How do you shape the charges?

See above.

How pure do the explosives need to be in order to behave predictably? How does temperature affect them? How do you time the explosives to the triggering of the gun? How do you time the explosives so they detonate simultaneously?

It's a gun, see above. Nothing simultaneous about it, one piece of U-235 can be stationary.

How does the gun work? rails? powder?

Think cannons and cannonballs. It's a gun. 18th if not 17th Century technology.

Will that affect the shaped charges?

You seem to be confusing it with implosion-type plutonium bombs. Those are harder.

If anything is wrong, you have a very expensive dirty bomb, and you can't exactly test the thing, so you can't really know if it's as easy as you say it is.

The US was so sure that Little Boy (a U-235 gun-type bomb) would work they didn't even bother testing it before dropping it on Nagasaki. Fat Man (Pu implosion) they did test.

This is 60 year old technology, for pete's sake.

Re:So?

[AJWM]

Aargh, my bad. Little Boy was of course dropped on Hiroshima. Fat Man targeted Nagasaki.

Re:So?

[AJWM]

Back then, yes, there was nothing simple about it. They didn't even know what it was they needed to know, although they had some ideas. And they had to work it all out with slide rules and mechanical calculators.

We have more advanced tools these days. It's still a major engineering effort to actually do it (vs armchair design beginning with "assume sufficient weapons grade plutonium (or uranium)", and even those ignore the difficulties in machining plutonium into the right shape parts. (You could cast it, if you really don't care about safety, and have plenty.)

Re:So?

[nickptar]

Gun type devices are no longer used in most applications because they're far too easy to detonate. Any accidental detonation of the internal munitions could result in the device being triggered.

Think suicide bombers care?

How long?

[macaulay805]

How long before /. gets shut down for distributing this information?!

Re:How long?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

How long before /. gets shut down for distributing this information?!

Well, first it needs to start distributing information.

RE: Simple: and elegant.

[fshalor]

Why does this read like an exceprt of that "terrorists handbook" that was getting passed around on unmarked 3.5" floppies in 1994. (With Castle Wolf, ironically!)

And as usual, most of the best places to get the materials you need are college campuses.

And while we're at it . . .

[Maradine]

. . . let's be alarmist about it, because the info didn't exist anywhere else.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[Phil Karn]

Not only that, much of the basic information about the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear weapons was openly published by the US decades ago in the book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[EvilBudMan]

I gotta nother interesting link.

http://oakridgevisitor.com/tidbits.html

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[thermopile]

To further the alarmist attitude, take this quote FTA:

Experts believe a crude plutonium bomb could be designed and assembled by terrorists possessing no greater level of skill than needed by the AUM cult to attack the Tokyo underground with nerve gas in 1995.

That is just plain wrong. The shape needed for a plutonium bomb to go off needs some very high tolerances, not achievable by average guys in a garage shop. Also throw in the fact that you must get the Plutonium-240 out of the PU-239, or it will prematurely detonate and all you're left with is a fizzle, not a true bomb. [The Pu-240 spontaneously fissions, and it will kick-start the fission process before the majority of the -239 kicks in, and it blows apart the sphere before you really get any significant neutron multiplication]

Perhaps the above fits in with the "crude plutonium bomb", but the way it's portrayed sure is alarmist.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[irrelative83]

But those sites don't have nearly as many pretty pictures as the article...

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[Mondoz]

Popular Science did an article very much like this one a few months back.

They did go a few steps further to describe what sorts of effects each type of explosive device could have in various situations, and how secure (or not) some of the facilities were that had some of these materials and equipment.

Some of their descriptions of the levels of security at some refinery plants were comical. Unguarded unlocked doors, minimial security staff, reports of missing plutonium containers...
Scary stuff.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[rgmoore]

Also throw in the fact that you must get the Plutonium-240 out of the PU-239, or it will prematurely detonate and all you're left with is a fizzle, not a true bomb.

It appears that the effect of 240Pu has been overstated. The Nuclear Weapon Archive (in section 6.2.2.10, discussing reactor grade plutonium as a weapons material) suggests that the designation of low 240Pu plutonium as "weapons grade" reflects primarily economic concerns rather than strict weapons designs ones. It reports that a Fat Man design using reactor grade Pu (~24% 240Pu) would still have a likely yield of about 0.5 kt. That's obviously quite a reduction from the actual yield, but it would still be capable of causing catastrophic damage in a terrorist attack. A more sophisticated implosion design could boost the yield by as much as an order of magnitude, and fusion boosting (which is admittedly quite sophisticated and likely to be beyond the "crude" terrorist bomb) would essentially eliminate predetonation as a problem.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[drivers]

Cool site. I never knew that a bomb going off would cause aurora to appear somewhere else on Earth. Coincidentally, that's the second website I've seen today mentioning beta particles/electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines in space. And before today I had never heard of the phenomenon. Weird... (The other one was here (via boingboing.net))

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[georgewilliamherbert]

That is just plain wrong. The shape needed for a plutonium bomb to go off needs some very high tolerances, not achievable by average guys in a garage shop.

Spherical implosion is moderately tricky.

There are other, simpler, but still very functionally workable geometries and core assembly methods. Cylindrical implosion, linear implosion, etc.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[cathouse]

AFIK it's far better to control the 239-240 ratio in the initial production rather than later. The longer the fuel rods are in the reactor the greater the yeild of 240.

Re:And while we're at it . . .

[Phil Karn]

I think the auroras appear only when the bomb is detonated above the atmosphere.

Close to the ground, the atmosphere absorbs pretty much everything. That's why fireballs form at low altitudes but not in space. Microseconds after a bomb explodes, its vaporized residue is so hot that its blackbody radiation peaks in the soft X-ray region. The lower atmosphere is actually fairly opaque to soft X-rays, so it absorbs most of this energy and rapidly heats up, forming the characteristic nuclear fireball. Outside the atmosphere, there's nothing to stop this X-radiation and the associated charged particles, so they can be trapped in the earth's magnetic field lines.

This was all discovered when the US conducted a series of exoatmospheric tests (i.e., tests out of the atmosphere) in the vicinity of Johnston Island in the Pacific in the early 1960s. They literally launched real nuclear bombs on real missiles. (Imagine doing that today!)

This was also how the whole EMP phenomenon was discovered, and quite by accident -- some of the tests induced widespread electrical damage in Hawaii, quite some distance away. It was kept a secret for over a decade.

Girlfriend

[RancidMilk]

Sounds like the same thing with my girlfriend. There is a tight bond, and when she is ripped off of me, lots of energy is released.

Re:Girlfriend

[Kookus]

I'm wondering how much energy is released?
But I guess that depends on how much air pressure you used.

Re:Girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right girlfriend, most people call it a computer

Re:Girlfriend

[ArsonSmith]

Sort of a flubbery, flatulant sounding energy as she loses all her air, right?

Re:Girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

There are billions of computers but only one of them is his girlfriend. You're right it would be nice of him to specify that she's made (completely) of silicon though.

Re:Girlfriend

[grassy_knoll]

Sounds like the same thing with my girlfriend. There is a tight bond, and when she is ripped off of me, lots of energy is released.

So... what... energy is sticky?

[badum-ching]

Only in America...

[RobertB-DC]

Only in our beloved country could someone think that this set of pages "sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." The information presented is what anyone with a high-school level knowledge of science should know. It's what anyone old enough to vote should know. When Bush claimed that Saddam was buying yellowcake from Nigeria -- even if it had been true -- it should have been obvious that without a lot of additional sophisticated equipment, it was about as useless as talcum powder.

On the other hand, I did get a nice refresher on the process. You do forget a few things in 20 years. And I can use the site as a resource for my kids, since they'll be too busy being taught "Intelligent Design" to be bothered with anything as mundane as chemistry and physics.

Re:Only in America...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I was as smart as you.

Re:Only in America...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or reading the 10 chapters about how great the 60's were vs. the half page about the American Revolution in history class.

Re:Only in America...

[Orne]

And only in America are there those that believe that Saddam's government didn't have the refining capabilities to work with the uranium. At the very least, he was persuing the material to experiment with, with the full intention of proceding towards modern weaponry.

Lest we forget, his government was 90% of the way to completing a French-built nuclear reactor (before it was severely damaged in 1981). The French abandoned the project in 1984; Iraq rebuilt the plant without outside assistance in 1988. After invading Kuwait, in late 1990 Iraq began converting the plant to produce weapons grade plutonium. The plant was leveled by Desert Storm air attacks in Feb 1991.

It is idiotic to believe that Iraq technology remained static for 10 years, and it is rather naive to believe that with that length of time to aquire material with the illbegotten oil-for-food revenue, that he didn't already have the equipment within his country to refine whatever uranium he was able to import. But this is America, where we allow people to believe whatever they want to believe...

Re:Only in America...

[AchilleTalon]

AMEN!

These pages are pretty useless and surely doesn't deserve the title for this /. post being a HOW-TO.

Re:Only in America...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the alternative-universe where schools teach from history books that don't focus on the American Revolution but do focus on "how great the 60's were" accessable via simple household means, or do we have to build a plutonium bomb (as described in the article) to rend a large enough hole in the fabric of spacetime?

Re:Only in America...

[slashdotnickname]

exactly what makes something "insightful" on /.? I honestly can't find anything remotely insightful about the parent post. He basically calls the site author stupid... faults America for allowing the author the freedom to host said stupidity... only to then admit he found the site benificial as a topic refresher... am I supposed to be impressed by this "insight

Re:Only in America...

[AchilleTalon]

And while I am at it. The FA is clear about the kind of facilities needed to achieved some destructive "useful" result. The enrichement facility alone is a challenge. This is the reason the main treat is countries already having such facilities for civilian purpose and trying to recable them to produce military-grade uranium. To do that, they must avoid inspections from the UN organization in Vienna. So, about Saddam, it was not impossible he could produce military-grade uranium, since he was having some pieces of the puzzle, but from this point, you still need the proper explosive, being able to machine the core, berylium envelop, explosive lense, do some testing, etc.

Surely not something Joe Doe can do in his basement with the latest nifty: Nuclear Weapons for Dummies.

Re:Only in America...

[Rei]

Apparently you can't read your own links. You state:

Iraq rebuilt the plant without outside assistance in 1988

Your article states:

Project 182, relating to the construction of a research reactor, foresaw the construction of an indigenous research reactor to replace the capability that would have been provided by the Osirak (Tamuz-1) research reactor. This project originated in 1984/85 after the breakdown in Iraq's negotiations with France for the rebuilding of the Osirak reactor. The Project 182 reactor was intended to be a natural uranium - heavy water type, similar to the Canadian NRX reactor. When the project had become more defined, in 1987 and 1988, studies concentrated on the design of the reactor core. As this work progressed it was recognised that considerable IAEC and foreign resources would be needed to bring the project to fruition. In mid-1988, while still in the study phase, the project was allowed to lapse due to lack of available resources - a consequence of the higher priority given to the needs of the EMIS enrichment program.

For more details on the Iraqi program and how close it actually came (which gives a nice summary of the difficulties in the process - a whole lot more than the Beeb gave, at least), I recommend this article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Re:Only in America...

[Anonymous Coward]

And only on slashdot do the mods give intelligent rebuttles -1 offtopic because the truth doesn't fit in their idealogy, while the parent gets +1 informative...

(posting AC because I'm sure to get -1 flamebait...)

Re:Only in America...

[Rei]

Oh, also, I didn't notice this comment of yours:

It is idiotic to believe that Iraq technology remained static for 10 years, and it is rather naive to believe that with that length of time to aquire material with the illbegotten oil-for-food revenue, that he didn't already have the equipment within his country to refine whatever uranium he was able to import. But this is America, where we allow people to believe whatever they want to believe...

Apparently you think reality is idiotic. Suit yourself. :) I'll quote:

Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraqs ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date.

Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.

They go on to talk about how Iraq wanted to retain its knowlegable people in case the sanctions were ever lifted, but even its knowlege base eroded.

Note that the ISG had every motive to *overstate* the case (and its head was ardently pro-war). I've seen several reputable groups contest some of the measly "intent" evidence that they provide for the various investigated programs. If you want to discuss this more, we should probably take it off slashdot, or we'll get too off topic; the issue is how easy nuclear weapons are to make.

Re:Only in America...

[javamann]

Yea, and I am persuing Nicole Kidman with the full intention of proceding towards sex. In hindsight it appears Iraq technology did not remain static for 10 years, it went into the toilet.
This is America, where I have the RIGHT to believe you are an asshole and it is going to take decades to clean up the mess you are creating.

Re:Only in America...

[Jboy_24]

I must comment about the ISG's report. It is fascinating in its use of the bold font attribute to highlight damning evidence and to diminish un-damning evidence (no thesaurus handy for the undamning part)..

Example.

Iraq initialy refused, as part of their efforts to deter the investigation, to provide any evidence regarding their secret attempt to build a nuclear device . But 12 hours later gave us a document that provided all the evidence we needed to comprehsively investigate all of Iraq's nuclear efforts.

Iraq routinely attempted to import massive quanities of yellowcake. But all of those attempts were unsuccesful or largly the works of agents of Saddam embezziling funds.

Iraq constructed and tested a dirty bomb built from used nuclear reactor fuel, intended to be smuggled into the United States. Or so the ISG team collectivly brainstormed as to what the ideal finding from our group would be, unfortunatly this wasn't the case.

Re:Only in America...

[whats_a_zip]

"And only on slashdot do the mods give intelligent rebuttles -1 offtopic because the truth doesn't fit in their idealogy, while the parent gets +1 informative...

(posting AC because I'm sure to get -1 flamebait...)"

Dude, relax. It's just a forum. I tend to agree with you. The moderators here tend to be left of center. I tend to be right of center. Goes back to that quote from Churchill, (I parphrase): If a man isn't liberal when he's 20, he has no heart, if he's not conservative when he's 40, he has no head.
I'm over 40!

Anyway, if it's worth saying, grow some balls, say it, defend it, and own up to it!

Re:Only in America...

[whats_a_zip]

"On the other hand, I did get a nice refresher on the process. You do forget a few things in 20 years. And I can use the site as a resource for my kids, since they'll be too busy being taught "Intelligent Design" to be bothered with anything as mundane as chemistry and physics."

I find it interesting how liberal points of view automatically elevate a comment, even when it's lacking much in the way of substance. And, at then end, when you digress and take a very weak swipe at intelligent design, you aren't seen as offtopic.

I don't take offense. I don't have emotional investment in this. Just observing how the moderators tend to work here.

Re:Only in America...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq did not and would never have posessed the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. Even if they had one fully functional research reactor and a million tons of yellow cake or Uranium ore, what good do you think either of those things would have done them? A reactor doesn't process yellow cake. A breeder reactor can produce Plutonium from Uranium..but the reactor being built wasn't a breeder.

So lets just review: No way to process yellow cake/ore into usuable fuel. No way to produce Plutonium from the Uranium they don't have anyway.

Yeah, I was fucking quaking in my boots over the Iraqi nuclear program!

Re:Only in America...

[gb7djk]

Er.. I believe the article was on the BBC which AFAIK is an organ of your former colonial masters circa 1776.

Re:Only in America...

[myowntrueself]

'You do forget a few things in 20 years. And I can use the site as a resource for my kids, since they'll be too busy being taught "Intelligent Design" to be bothered with anything as mundane as chemistry and physics.'

Thats ok, I am sure that God will teach them how to build a nuke...

Re:Only in America...

[Kethinov]

Which is ridiculous. The quote arrogantly equates conservatism with the wisdom of age. Conservatism isn't wisdom. It's "the world is fucked up, but I'm going to be apathetic about it because everything's peachy for me." Notice how people who get fucked tend to be liberals and people who have peachy jobs with disposable incomes tend to be conservatives?

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium is a dangerous element. They shouldn't be playing arounmd with it like this.

Article Text?

[sjwaste]

Can someone post the article text? For some reason, BBC News is blocked at work.

Re:Article Text?

[dlZ]

" Can someone post the article text? For some reason, BBC News is blocked at work."

Because they are the new source of terrorist information!

Re:Article Text?

[The Slaughter]

Try the Fox News website.

If it's not also blocked, you need to quit your job.

Re:Article Text?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

You're saying that slashdot isn't blocked, but the BBC is? Well, for whatever reason it is blocked, it's not blocked for productivity reasons, that's for sure. :-)

Re:Article Text?

[shotfeel]

Amazing!

That big Homeland Security budget is really paying off. And here I thought they wouldn't accomplish anything.

2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy /. is on the bleeding edge here! The Beeb rolls this one out whenever they have an article about N. Korea.

Off topic

[oskard]

News flash, google also has a nuclear how to:
home made nuclear stuff

Where does the fuel come from?

[Colin Smith]

Something that gets skipped over. At the moment, Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan are the largest producers.

I'm not sure being a fuel producer is necessarily a good thing given the USA's penchant for invading other countries. And Canada is so close after all.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think the USA buys most of its uranium ;)

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Kookus]

Michigan's state motto is:
First line of defense fromt he Canadians


To confirm you're not a script,
please type the text shown in this image: vkijgrd

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada is an excellent target to invade as they also have the fields of hydroponic marajuana that need to be shut down.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[geomon]

I think you mean "ore", not fuel.

Fuel is fabricated, not mined.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, first line of *defense*. As if. Given the size of our military, if we weren't so damned inoffensive I'm pretty sure some minor terrorist organization would be fighting a land war with us right now (and winning due to their relatively overwhelming manpower of 200 people).

Remember, we're more afraid of you than you are of us.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Ubergrendle]

As a Canadian citizen, I have *NO* fears that the US will be invading us anytime soon. Despite some questionable foreign policy decisions in recent years, the American leadership has not suffered the equivalent to a lobotomy or head injury anytime recently. It would be an economically suicidal move, would isolate the US diplomatically, and really offers no benefits...with free trade Canada provides -- competitively -- all the resources and services the US requires.

What's going to happen, the US invades Canada to go from 80% to 100% of our exports? Its a ridiculous notion. Despite some of our mainstream political differences, our two nations have the largest border in the world, undefended the longest...it would be difficult to find a relationship between two nations more prosperous, equitable, and peaceful in human history.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have though fresh uranium would best be mined from Uranus. Certianly my anus is radioactive.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[PMuse]

Besides, what could the US get by invading that it can't get now? ;)

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Zeebs]

Choke our rivers and roads with your dead eh? Fair enough if you wanna.

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Stonehand]

The forced repatriation of Celine Dion? :p

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[Ubergrendle]

Sorry, you get Elisha Cuthbert, Pamela Anderson, and Celine Dion as a *set*. You can't return one without the others.

If you'd like to take advantage of our no-questions-asked return policy, I will forward to you my home address for the addressing label for Cuthbert...

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[dasunt]

However, if you are a country interested in nuclear power, you can use breeder reactors to extend your amount of nuclear fuel.

Unfortunately, breeder reactors can also be used to create weapons.

OTOH, I've seen very valid proposals for extracting nuclear fuel from sea-water for long-term use. (Long-term being defined as "billions of years"). Unfortunately, the cost is too high -- its still produces cheap electricity (since the cost of fuel is a small percentage of electric cost), but who wants to spend millions on an experimental plant to obtain something that's ten times cheaper with current methods?

Re:Where does the fuel come from?

[loucura!]

If we invade, we're repatriating Celine Dion to the Sudan, not back to Canada.

Not That Easy

[geomon]

First you have to enrich the fuel.
Then you have to irradiate the fuel.
Then you have to separate the uranium from the plutonium.
Then you have to build the device (tricky is an understatement).

If you just use uranium you still have to mine, extract, and enrich the fuel. Then you have to build the trigger and test.

None of this is cheap nor safe to do.

Re:Not That Easy

[Colin Smith]

They could pretty much dispense with steps 2 and onwards. They'd probably just pack the nuclear fuel round some conventional explosives, oil and ammonium nitrate mix and contaminate as large an area as possible. The centre of New York, Washinton, London is some very expensive real estate.

Re:Not That Easy

[geomon]

They could dispense with all of the steps and follow your advice with a radioisotope source stolen from a commercial vendor.

No nuclear fuel needed.

The centre of New York, Washinton, London is some very expensive real estate.

Which means that it will be cleaned up quickly because it is so valuable.

Re:Not That Easy

[Thud457]

In this country, you gotta make the money first.
Then when you get the money, you get the uranium.
Then when you get the uranium, then you get the women.

Re:Not That Easy

[geomon]

"Say 'hello' to my little friend"

Re:Not That Easy

[Retric]

Uranium is nasty stuff and you can make a dirty bomb out of it but by the time you have a system in place to get highly concentrated uranium in large quantizes you are already close to building a working bomb. Let's say you where to build a 50lb uranium bomb well you need to have varied good containment and transportation facilities or most of your workforce is going to be dead before you complete the project. You also need to shield the bomb's electronics or it's got a reasonable chance to blow up before you move it to your target area or simply fail to detonate at all. It can still be done, but there are a lot easer targets to do an equivalent amount of damage with less risk and way less cost.

PS: Most city's are poor targets for simple dirty bombs as they have a drainage system that will remove most of the contaminated dust after it rains.

Re:Not That Easy

[spaceyhackerlady]

They could pretty much dispense with steps 2 and onwards. They'd probably just pack the nuclear fuel round some conventional explosives, oil and ammonium nitrate mix and contaminate as large an area as possible.

This is what scares the crap out of so many people.

You would actually need some fairly high-level radioactive materials to make a good dirty bomb: uranium ore will make a geiger counter nervous, but nothing much happens until you start concentrating the stuff.

You don't need to bother making plutonium if you want to make a fission bomb, by the way. You can come up with critical mass of uranium 235 without too much difficulty (relatively speaking) and still make quite a bang.

I have some radioactive camera lenses (Kodak Aero Ektar, Pentax Super-Takumar - thorium, y'know), but am always on the lookout for some orange FiestaWare (uranium, y'know)

...laura whose geiger counter came from Russia

Re:Not That Easy

[Detritus]

Have you looked at the half-life for U235? It isn't much of a radiological hazard. That makes it a poor choice for a dirty bomb. Just handling it isn't going to make anyone sick. It only becomes dangerous after you stick it in a reactor and transmute some of it to elements with much shorter half-lives.

Re:Not That Easy

[KDN]

Hey, uranium is not nasty stuff. You could hold a brick of it in your hand, and unless your emitting lots of neutrons, or you've exceeded critical mass, the only hazard would be a broken toe when you drop it. Uranium is an alpha particle emitter, which means it gets stopped by a piece of paper. If you grind it up and blow it into the air, yes, your work force will die of lung cancer in 20 years. So they have plenty of time to make plentyh of bombs.

You want weapons of mass destruction? Try smallpox, ebola, or the plague. There are damns in the US where there are 100K people downstream. How well do you think they are guarded? You want a dirty radiological bomb? Try radio-cobalt. No nuclear material needed to make this stuff.

Re:Not That Easy

[Retric]

U235 is vary safe but U232 is nasty stuff. If your going to make a dirty bomb for long term contamination U232 is about the perfact substance. It's haulf life is ~68 years and it has a tun of sort lived things it decays to so it's vary radio active and will stay that way for a long time.

Now as I said in the real world it's much easer to make a shity atomic bomb than a true dirty bomb but covering central park with U232 would make it vary nasty place for a long time.

PS: If your going to make a mess of things for a long time dirty mobs can work well but they work better as a fear tactic than as a true wepon to kill people.

Re:Not That Easy

[Retric]

Sorry, Uranium 232 is nasty stuff and it has a haulf life is long enough so you can collect a good pile of it to use with a non critical dirty bomb and a long decay path. I was going to look up the type of uranium with a haulf life of ~70 years but forgot about it.

The problem with using somethign like ebola is many people like myself would nuke the fuck out of any contry with even the slightest link to such an attack. Ok you killed 100 million americans but your contry is now a large glass plate that's going to be radio active for a long long time. The problem is the old "M.A.D." idea where you can't get anythign out of an attack like this other than death.

Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I was wondering what to do this summer.

war...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the US will go to war with Great Britain for distributing plans to produce WMDs.

This just in

[FidelCatsro]

Cheney has just announced plans to liberate the BBC from the terrorists overords , Tinky-winkie(of telytubies fame) was caught on cammera pleeding for American assistance to save him from the cruel opresive burocracy just moments before taking a barrage of rolland rats

Re:This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

Above: hyperbole to exagerate the story in the same way that the submitter did .

Enrichment step helpful hints

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found than an off-the-shelf cotton candy machine can be used in place of a gas centrifuge in separating the u-238 from u-235.

Re:Enrichment step helpful hints

[tomjen]

And the cotton candy tastes so much better afterwords.

To confirm you're not a script,
please type the text shown in this image:remdbiv

Very old news

[Anonymous Coward]

There's tons of info on how to build atomic bombs and the science behind them on loads of sites like wikipedia, howstuffworks etc etc

It's not a question of if but when a dissadent terrorist group builds a working one. or two. or ten

When that happens we will see how well ID cards save us against the enormous explosion. Perhaps you can kind of use the ID card to deflect the blast somehow..

Re:Very old news

[bemenaker]

I read the first two lines of your post, and thought to myself, "Oh god, not another Bushinite," then I read the third line of you post, and fell out of my chair laughing. Got weird looks from my cubineighbors.

Re:Very old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the article itself is old. Has no-one notice the URL yet:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/20 03/nuclear_fuel_cycle/mining/default.stm ?

this could be handy...

[zdr1977]

...for powering one of the 4-GPU motherboards....

And this article...

[MikeMacK]

Experts believe a crude plutonium bomb could be designed and assembled by terrorists possessing no greater level of skill than needed by the AUM cult to attack the Tokyo underground with nerve gas in 1995.

And don't forget to include this article...

lol

[TheKidWho]

as if this information would be any bit useful in building a real nuclear weapon! hah!

Nothing new, check your encyclopedia

[Chairboy]

The article basically covers the same stuff that's been in encyclopedias for decades. I'm sure we'll get a bunch of posters nervously posting about how irresponsible it is to release this info, but it's hardly ground breaking.

The better informed the public is to how these things work, the better off we'll be in participating in our national policies. Saying that the information should be restricted is akin to arguing in favor of 'security through obscurity'. I argue that if you criticize both the BBC article and Microsoft for their security policies, then you're exhibiting traits of hypocrisy.

In the end, the part of the equation that's required is the presence of uranium. It's hard to get. It's even harder to mine/refine, especially in secret.

Re:Nothing new, check your encyclopedia

[amliebsch]

It's even harder to mine/refine, especially in secret.

Bingo. Technologists, expecially computer geeks, seem to have a tendency (perhaps justifiably) to believe that mere knowledge of HOW to do something means that actually doing it is trivial. In this case, however, this knowledge is not a severe threat because its implementation remeans one of the most difficult, dangerous, and expensive processes known to man.

Re:Nothing new, check your encyclopedia

[Anonymous Coward]

most difficult, dangerous, and expensive processes known to man? sounds like finding a woman to be your partner to me

Re:Nothing new, check your encyclopedia

[keziahw]

"finding a woman to be your partner to me" erm.... ... ...?? I know there was supposed to be a comma there, but that's just weird.

Hmmmm....

[d474]

BBC DIY U235

Not Even Close

[rgmoore]

Sorry, but that site isn't even close to "everything you might need to know" about building a Bomb. That's more like the 5 minute capsule summary. If you really want to know everything about building a Bomb but don't want to get a security clearance, the best place to look is Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapon Archive. It's amazing just how much non-classified information it contains.

Re:Not Even Close

[derniers]

geez, if you worry about this---what about when (most of) the W-68 design somehow made it onto the web a few years ago? it may be still out there....... the hard part is getting the U235/Pu239- not in building the bomb, as far as we know everyone has had success on their first try (now that is scary)

Re:Not Even Close

[Rapier_M]

You may also wish to check out "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. It gives a lot of background about the people, politics, and technology behind the first atomic bomb.

Gone Fission

[bigtallmofo]

(Oblig Simpsons Quote)

"Furious George! What have they done to you? Smithers, this monkey is going to need most of your skin."

Everything I need to know?

[Valar]

If you could really get everything you need to know about making a nuclear bomb from one bbc article, everybody would have them. Maybe everything you need to know about how a bomb works, if you don't intend to actually design one, in one article. Heck, you couldn't even really learn how to design a _rifle_ from an article that size.

Enrichment in USA?

[bobbis.u]

From the article:
COUNTRIES WITH CENTRIFUGE PLANTS: Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Iran, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, UK

What does the USA use instead of centrifuge plants then?

Re:Enrichment in USA?

[jfmerryman]

I believe we use gaseous diffusion.

American Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

Scared ....the peopples of Amerika are.

Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupidest fucking slashdot story this year so far. Jesus H. fucking Christ, Zonk & company. This is *NOT* news. This is *NOT* groundbreaking. Any idiot who wants to know 10 times as much information about unriching uranium need only google or go to wikipedia.

I'm seriously fuming now.

Re:Honestly...

[chris_mahan]

go ahead then, cancel your membership.

Article is an excerpt...

[DaedalusLogic]

From: "Nuclear Weapons for Dummies"

Chapters you'll get in the full book:

"Oppenheimer Shcmoppenheimer"
"Building Your First Triggering Device"
"Oops, Look at All the Fallout"

$14.95 US / $19.95 CAN

Re:Article is an excerpt...

[Soul-Burn666]

When will Fisher-Price start selling "My First A-Bomb Kit"? and later "My First H-Bomb Kit"?

Re:Article is an excerpt...

[sillybilly]

Hahaha. Yeah man, this is the stupidest story ever. They worry about nuclear proliferation. You pretty much can't stop people from using even a compressed gas cylinder or fertilizer to do bad things. Intent is hard to control, but that's you're only chance. Sure you have mentally ill people like Nero, and they are sometimes hard to pick out, but humanity got where it is because of cooperation, and cooperation is built on trust, at least some kind of trust. For instance, you take for granted that 95% of sentences told to you are true. If it were the other way around, with 95% lies and only 5% truth, you wouldn't have a society, everyone would be on their own. When trust is abused, everyone loses. Education is the answer to wars, at least to the threaten the survival of the whole planet kind of wars. If you have a war where a few people die, piss on it, nobody lives forever, but something where the whole planet dies, you can educate people to recognize they are not all that, and there are bigger and more important things in the world then themselves. Simply shoving a religion down their throat that guarantees an afterlife will not make them care enough about this world.

Re:Article is an excerpt...

[turtledot]

Personally I prefer the book

"How to be the first on your block to be the last on your block"

Re:Article is an excerpt...

[Anonymous Coward]

education isn't the answer to wars, you will always have clashing ideologies, and fights over restricted resources, what will happen when the oil runs low? we are already seeing. The only answer to wars, is to wipe out anyone who disagrees with you or might disagree with you. The reason? people are stupid to the extent that education can't help.

Re:Article is an excerpt...

[sillybilly]

Yeah, well go ahead. Go wipe everyone out, and see if you have complete agreement among those of you who are left. Good luck. In the meantime I think education is too the key to handle clashing ideologies. At the very least everyone should read an excerpt from Socrates, so they can apply it to their own ideology. As far as resources go, as long there is sunlight, there is a resource for life on Earth. Education is even the solution to overpopulation too.
There is nothing more beautiful than an educated person, who's free, in charge of his full disciples, in charge of his inner childish self and ego. It's like with soldiers - they need to be forged, they don't become good soldiers on their own without practicing discipline. (For all the bad the a war is, sometimes you just have to be able to fight back. A good soldier is one who loves peace above all.) There is nothing more laughable than an army turning back running away in chaos everyone for their own life at the sound of the first gun shot. Similarly, it takes practice to become a good person, a person who can look beyond the immediate self.

Errors I noticed

[Profane MuthaFucka]

-Enrichment levels for uranium meant for power plants is about 20% U-235, not 3%.
-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.
-They didn't mention confinement of the reaction on the gun type of bomb. If you don't try to hold it together with a heavy bomb casing, the bomb will blow itself apart as soon as fission begins, resulting in a really low yield.

If you were to try to build a bomb from these instructions, it wouldn't work.

Re:Errors I noticed

[RichMan]

> If you were to try to build a bomb from these instructions, it wouldn't work.

So is this an attempt by some unnamed organization to poision the information network?

This would make any information out there untrusted and require verification and tests before being trusted adding to the complexity of the process. Pretty good low cost method for reducing the value of information, (until critiques of its reliability get out anyways).

Re:Errors I noticed

[Nytewynd]

Great. You just filled in the missing piece for the terrorists.

*Gets in bomb shelter*

Re:Errors I noticed

[ikandi]

Another idiocy is the assertion that an Aum-level body could go plutonium. The detonation timing to achieve a perfectly spherical implosion and the precision milling / metallurgy required for the neutron reflector are a very very big deal which is why Iran is going for the U weapon. Anyone who has read a bit of Tom Clancy knows this :) Save your BBC News criticism for their apologist posture on religious fascism.

Re:Errors I noticed

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. This article was written by a person who probably was a journalism student. Now think back to your university days... I don't know about you, but the one that I knew became most famous in my dorm (of science nerds) for innocently asking in a loud voice "What's a vector?" The entire place broke into laughter, which offended her scalar intellect.

Re:Errors I noticed

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct, except that it is almost impossible to make Pu-239 bomb without using the implosion method. Because Pu-239 has an higher alpha factor, the reaction accelerates much faster than U-235 requiring considerably faster assembly than the gun method can provide. The US nuclear program primarily uses a U-235/Pu-239 blend to maximize the energy released given the assembly configuration and speed.

Also, the bomb casing has only small affect on fission primaries. The U-238 baffles used in the Little Boy (gun type) design where primarily used as neutron reflectors, though it probably had some benefit to the yield. In the Teller-Ulam hydrogen bomb design, the casing is much more important.

-a

Re:Errors I noticed

[abb3w]

-Enrichment levels for uranium meant for power plants is about 20% U-235, not 3%.

No, that's about right. Standard commercial PWR/BWR reactors use 3-5% enrichment; CANDU heavy water reactors can use lower enrichment. Research (and military?) reactors tend to use higher enrichments-- 20-90%. However, the NRC has been strongly encouraging universities to recalculate the load geometries to rely on fuel at the lower end of that range to limit the amount of highly enriched uranium in non-military facilities. The school I studied Nuclear Engineering at downgraded from 95% enriched to 19.9% enriched in 1992 or so.

-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.

Actually, I recall that because of the neutron energy profile from fission, Pu-gun type bombs do not work well-- you tend to get only partial fission before it blows apart.

Re:Errors I noticed

[Nuclear Therapist]

-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.

Untrue.

It would be very hard to build a working gun design with plutonium. The reaction rate for plutonium is too high vs the speed of insertion. If the plutonium even triggered it would tend to blow itself apart thermally before you got any significant yield. You need uniform compression in all dimensions to hold the assembly together long enough. That's why they went to the tremendous complexity of an implosion design for Fat Man in the first place. Even this design requires an initiator at the center or an abundance of available neutrons provided by a neutron source (aka a "zipper") during supercritical assembly to guarantee an adequate trigger.

Re:Errors I noticed

[Detritus]

Plutonium produces too many spontaneous neutrons to be used in a gun device. There is a high probability of a fizzle before assembly is complete.

With a proper initiator, the efficiency of a gun device can be improved. It only takes about 500 ns for the chain reaction to run its course. That's too short a time for the bomb casing to be an issue. A heavy tamper will slow the disassembly of the core.

Re:Errors I noticed

[radtea]

Actually, I recall that because of the neutron energy profile from fission, Pu-gun type bombs do not work well-- you tend to get only partial fission before it blows apart.

That is correct. Gun-type bombs are 235-U only. Plutonium requires implossion, with its attendent engineering issues, to get more than a fizzle. Although it is probably true that "one nuclear fizzle can ruin your whole day", too. The difference is due to the ratios of fission vs scattering cross-sections in the two nuclear species.

Very few gun-type bombs have ever been made, but they are so easy and reliable that the "Little Boy" design wasn't even tested prior to operational deployment over Hiroshima. The Trinity test was a plutonium bomb of the "Fat Man" design, which was tested prior to deployment because detonation depends on all the engineering working perfectly.

--Tom

Re:Errors I noticed

[Idarubicin]

CANDU heavy water reactors can use lower enrichment.

CANDU reactors actually use unenriched natural uranium. It was one of the big benefits when Canada started building them--they didn't need to build uranium enrichment facilities. (And the Canadian millitary wasn't prepared to subsidize the R&D and operational costs of uranium enrichment, since Canada didn't (and still doesn't) want nukes.)

Re:Errors I noticed

[jafac]

If you were to try to build a bomb from these instructions, it wouldn't work.

wow! Thanks for the tip! I was going to detonate mine in a plywood box, but now I see I need a heavy bomb casing. Maybe I'll try depleted uranium or something. . . got lots of that left over. Gee, that wouldn't react with the neutrons, would it?

Re:Errors I noticed

[KDN]

• 20% U235 is used in nuclear submarines. They need to burn for a long time.
• 3% to 5% is used in commercial PWR (pressure water reactor). They use light water, so need a small amount of enrichment, not a lot.
• 0.5% (or there abouts) Canada uses natural uranium, but a heavy water modulator

If you have pure Plutonium 239 I believe you can use a gun type bomb. But pure plutonium 239 is alnmost impossible to come by, there is always contanamation from pu-240, which would cause the bomb to go off prematurely and fizzle instead.

I don't recall anything about a heavy metal casing to hold the bomb together. If memory serves, its usually made of berillium, a very light weight metal. Its used because its a good neutron reflector, which reflects neutrons back into the core to keep the reaction going.

Re:Errors I noticed

[identity0]

I think you underestimate Aum's resources. The current incarnation, "Aleph", probobly could not go nuclear, but the pre-1995 Aum Shinrikyo probobly could, if given the base materials. They might have been able to procure that, if they had tried.

The thing to understand about Aum is that they were more like Scientologists than the Branch Davidians, in that they had legitamite business fronts, in fields ranging from computer retail to child care. Their financial asseets were considerable, and their HQ compound had several building dedicated to manufacturing weapons, including Sarin and assault rifles. Many of their science facilities were more advanced than what could be found in universities.

They also tended to recruit from college students who were young and naive but fairly intelligent. They probobly had the talent and money required to build an A-bomb, if they had gotten the materials.

A plutonium bomb would certainly be complex, but it's still WW2-level technology, after all.

Funny

[ImaLamer]

Yesterday there was a small congressional hearing looking into nuclear weapons and their ability to be used by terrorists. During the hearing someone testified that you see declassified documents on the internet, but never anything comprehensive.

The congressmen, some, were asking their questions like they wanted the information to be out there and talked a lot of urban myths and so forth. They were almost let down when they found out the truth - it hasn't happened yet, "they" don't have a bomb.

Anyways, this reads like an encyclopedia article though...

Newsflash!

[Spy der Mann]

AMAZING DISCOVERY!
Nuclear energy works by splitting atoms!
(continued on page 10)

Re:Newsflash!

[FidelCatsro]

If they had a story on how to make a working fussion reactor then i might be a little intrested

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[pocketfullofshells]

You get a gold star!

Move to the front of the class!

ya think the rain will hurt the rubarb?

You Forgot

[Greyfox]

This handy article on what to do with your plutonium once you've refined it. A must have for any organization interested in building such a device...

Re:You Forgot

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. I especially like the appropriately tounge-in-cheek instructions:

Construction Method

1. First, obtain about 50 pounds (110 kg) of weapons grade
Plutonium at your local supplier (see Note 1). A nuclear power
plant is not recommended, as large quantities of missing
Plutonium tends to make plant engineers unhappy. We suggest that
you contact your local terrorist organization, or perhaps the
Junior Achievement in your neighborhood.

Re:You Forgot

[stoborrobots]

and the equally comical Note 1:

Notes

1. Plutonium (Pu), atomic number 94, is a radioactive metallic
element formed by the decay of Neptunium and is similar in
chemical structure to Uranium, Saturnium, Jupiternium, and Marsipan.

Re:You Forgot

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this one of the articles that were described as "information on how to construct nuclear weapons" that were found in an Al Quida camp?

No, seriously.

Re:You Forgot

[CapnGrunge]

50 * .454 = 22.7

22.7 Kg for ya, dude :)

Nothing New Here, Move on....

[Nuclear Therapist]

Already covered long, long ago... See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.

Inconsiderate

[rlp]

The Beeb could have at least provided a translation of the article in Farsi. :~)

Re:Inconsiderate

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC in Farsi: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/

Re:Inconsiderate

[rlp]

Page G-47 Errata

In a recent posting it was stated that the BBC may have been inconsiderate for not posting plans for construction of a nuclear weapon in Farsi. In fact, the BBC actually did post plans for construction of a nuclear weapon in Farsi. The writer and editors of the previous posting regret this oversight.

As if

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that people can't understand that intelligently designing a universe requires knolwdge of chemistry and physics?

Re:As if

[jidar]

That's not what people mean when they say intelligent design.
You bring up a good point though, we should probably change the name of the theory to something more suitable, like ignorant design.

Re:As if

[Spodlink05]

That's not what people mean when they say intelligent design. You bring up a good point though, we should probably change the name of the theory to something more suitable, like ignorant design.

No intelligent designer would ever come up with people stupid enough to spout crap like intelligent design.

Just another example

[Wapiti-eater]

of the decline of /. into a cespool of sensationalist pablum. This reads like it was published by the National Enquirer - not a "news for nerds" site. (maybe a 'news for n00bs' site)

Not news, not newsworthy, not even mildly interesting to anyone who was awake in 6th grade science class.

What's next? A front page story on the dangers and publich health threat of dihydrogen oxide?

Re:Just another example

[FidelCatsro]

I think the BBC story is aimed at school children to give them a little information for school projects .
So either is slashdot is moving into new territorys or i would say its a little error

Re:Just another example

[Hamstij]

It's dihydrogen MONoxide. You need to learn the names of all dangerous chemicals properly!!!

Re:Just another example

[Anonymous Coward]

oh quick rant time

i totally agree - IMHO this story is not really worthy of coverage here. i would like to think this knowledge is already known by the majority of readers here - be it from education in school years or from an individuals hunger for a better understanding of the world we live in.

- personally i clicked on this feed to see if it was a joke. sadly not... or have i really missed the point?

oh well, anyone got any recommendations for other sites covering 'News for Nerds' but without the 101?

Re:Just another example

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the term Hydrogen Hydroxide better. H+ + OH- ^heat= H20

Re:Just another example

[grumpyman]

It's still 'news' as accepted by the public if FOX and CNN still call those programs 'news'.

Re:Just another example

[Wapiti-eater]

I stand corrected.

But, I have to wash my hair now.

::reads numerous warnings, cautions and advisories on the dangers of Hydrogen Hydroxide::

Re:Just another example

[RockWolf]

Well, maybe not a front page story, but there is a website on the dangers of this insidious, deadly chemical. http://www.dhmo.org/

The Curve of Binding Energy

[KudzuKat]

As many others have noted, the information in the BBC article is readily available from numerous sources. For a good understanding of the concepts and dangers, I recommend The Curve of Binding Energy by John McPhee.

How is this information of significance

[BrentRJones]

to any normal person?

Re:How is this information of significance

[BrentRJones]

to anyone reading slashdot?

Way short of "everything"!

[abb3w]

The article says nothing about the composition or manufacture of the membranes used in gaseous diffusion, how to handle the corrosive nature of U-hexaflouride, and mentions NOTHING about Laser isotope separation (let alone useful tidbits like the actual activation frequencies for U235 and U238 hex). The folk running the Manhattan project had better info than this even before they started. Buy a good introductory textbook and you'll get way better instructions with far more technical detail.

I guess the slashdot editor thought it was a slow news day or something....

Re:Way short of "everything"!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I react uranium with flour ? Must it be gold medal flour, or will any supermarket flour do ?

slow news day on slashdot...

[spirit_fingers]

C'mon guys, this information is both old and public, and it's about as useful for making bombs as Monty Python's infamous guide to flute playing (blow in one end and run your fingers up and down the holes).

Let's have more stories about nude pictures on Yahoo!

everything?

[Vilim]

"The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons."

This is true, in the same way

"Everything you need to know how to build a car is that pistons get pushed down by gas exploding which turns the crankshaft which turns the wheels"

is everything you need to know to build a car. Or

"Think of space as a sheet with masses as balls"

Is everything you need to know about general relativity

A general overview of anything is usually quite simple however in practise building a nuclear bomb is pretty difficult.

Oh come on...

[reverseengineer]

I mean, the article is interesting enough, and relevant given the recent nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea, but this information is widely available and is far from technical. The principal thing that keeps everyone from possessing weapons-grade fissile material is the processing, a step "informatively" denoted with a pair of arrows.

If you want plutonium, you need to have a working fission reactor, which ostensibly makes you subject to regular inspection (and is hard to hide). If you want Highly Enriched Uranium, the enrichment process requires things like production scale mass spectrometers, giant centrifuges, and nasty chemicals (uranium hexafluoride, anyone?)- basically, a large amount of equipment that serves little other obvious purpose.

Of course, what we've seen with North Korea in particular is that the rest of the world knowing you're try to build nukes isn't always a deterrent to building nukes anymore, and in fact makes a handy bargaining chip where you agree to stop making plutonium in exchange for something you want, and then once you get it, continue making plutonium anyway.

Newcular World Order

[Doc Ruby]

They left out the address of AQ Khan, who runs a mailorder nukes biz in Pakistan. Just put an account# from Libya, Iran or North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia on your order, and you can get all the tutorial you need. You'll still have to get the fuel from somewhere, but there's plenty of Russian, Kazakh or even good ol' Italian mafia dealers. Try the Carlyle Group - they might be your one-stop-shop, including the negotiations that signal your initiation into the nuclear club.

Re:Newcular World Order

[flyingsquid]

They left out the address of AQ Khan, who runs a mailorder nukes biz in Pakistan.

Dude, I sent in my 4 boxtops and 8.95, and it's been 6-8 weeks already, so where's my freakin' bomb? Plus, those X-ray glasses Khan sent me totally do not help me see through women's clothing. Khan, if you're out there, I want my money back, you crook!

Seriously, this really drives home how the whole "Weapons of Mass Destruction" thing was just a bunch of bullshit. If the Bush Administration had truly wanted to do something about WMD they would have dealt with Pakistan's Nuclear Wal-Mart, put pressure on Iran, and gotten involved with North Korea- held out a few carrots and hinted at the stick of a few surgical strikes on their nuclear facilities. It's just incredible how much more dangerous this world has become under the watch of the Bush Administration, both through action and inaction. At present the occupation of Iraq has been so thorough cocked up that we're incapable of dealing with Iran or North Korea, and they know it.

Re:Newcular World Order

[Doc Ruby]

Robert McNamara, former US Secretary of Defense, warned this week that "quite credible individuals had said that they had never been more fearful of a nuclear detonation than now". Bush's White House exposed Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent in Africa protecting us from WMD development, as revenge on her husband, the former ambassador who debunked Bush's fake "Niger uranium for Iraq" memo that lied us into war in his State of the Union speech. And John Bolton, former ambassador (under Reagan / Bush Sr) to Honduras, where he covered up the illegal secret war bases attacking neighboring Nicaragua in Iran/Contra, is next to be sent to represent the US in the UN - which he'd like to destroy. Has anyone else noticed it's the same jerks in Washington boosting the same WMD programs in enemy countries? We've got WMD foxes guarding our henhouse - no wonder WMD tech sales are skyrocketing. Our WMD officials are all on the take from the global WMD arms dealers.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as simple as you think it is.

Only U-233 or U-235 is useful for fission reactions. While U-238 can fission, it requires at least 5 MeV of kinetic energy from an incident neutron, while U-233 and U-235 require no energy. This makes U-238 fairly useless for fission except in the case where plutonium is made (U-238 + n -> (U-239)* -> Np-239 -> Pu-239). Pu-239 requires no energy to fission (and this is general of all heavy nuclides with odd atomic masses).

U-235 is 0.65% naturally occuring, and U-238 is 99.35% naturally occuring. In order to make a reactor undergo a self-sustaining fission reaction, the concentration of U-235 in increased (enriched). This has to be done for reactors and bombs (though there are methods to make a self-sustaining reaction with natural fuel--very large reactors). Since U-235 requires no energy from the neutron to undergo fission, a slow neutron that spends more time passing by the nucleus will cause fission to occur more often. This is why nuclear reactors are moderated (typically with water, heavy water, or graphite).

If a nuclear bomb were moderated, the time to moderate (slow down the neutron to thermal energies) would allow heat transfer to occur. This would expand the bomb and destroy its geometry bringing the fission reaction to a halt. For this reason, nuclear bombs are designed to operate on fast fission reactions. This is also why a nuclear reactor cannot explode like a nuclear bomb.

Check the publication date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that this is news anyway, but if you'd checked the original publication date of the article you'd see it's old "news".

You want fusion? You got it!

[Tackhead]

> If they had a story on how to make a working fussion reactor then i might be a little intrested

"Good news, everyone!"
- Professor Hubert Farnsworth

Farnsworth Fusor. More on Wikipedia.

Buildable and safely operable by any grad student. A non-fusing version (using only hydrogen) that serves as a proof-of-concept could be built and safely demonstrated by a group of bright, mechanically-inclined, and well-equipped high school student.

If, by "working", you mean "produces more energy than it takes to operate", the Farnsworth Fusor doesn't work. If, however, you mean "produces a neutron flux whose presence can only be explained by fusion", it works just fine.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a gobshite; not everyone knows this.

This was written in 2003..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this was posted in 2003, this is an old news article. Why repost it?

Re:You want fusion? You got it!

[FidelCatsro]

Acording to simcity though this isnt due till around 2050

News Flash

[nurb432]

News Flash: BBC publishes gradeschool physics document...

Nothing news here...

Is it a slow news day?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

There is nothing in this BBC story that is not in most collage text books that cover this aspect of chemistry and physics.

Re:Is it a slow news day?

[Insipid Trunculance]

its either a slow news day or /. is getting behind the times even more than anybody could have thought possible.

This series of articles is from 2003.

Mod Parent UP!

[Phu5ion]

That's priceless, and much more accurately portrays the Slashdot community.

Detailed reads...

[jpellino]

"The Curve of Binding Energy" with Ted Taylor walking John McPhee through how much damage you could do for surprisingly little effort. Including a tour around southern Manhattan and speculation on using a poorly made nuke to topple a World Trade tower into the river...

That book inspired...

"Mushroom" by John Aristotle Philips about his paper at Princeton describing how to build a bomb. A student of Freeman Dyson, he got far more info than he ever dreamed he could get. The very impressive paper saved some less than stellar grades, and generated quite a buzz, more than a few cloaky phone calls and IIRC the paper got classified by the gummint.

last updated dates

[Fox_1]

I clicked through some of the links, and while it's an interesting article there is nothing new and what's more interesting to me is the article is filed under in depth/world/2003/ on the bbc site. The most recent update I found to it was oct. 2004. As interesting as this is, I don't know how it's very relevant or topical for today's news, there really isn't anything NEW there that hasn't already been fully covered on the bbc site since at least 2003 and a myriad of other sources for much longer.

old news!

[marksilverman]

I remember finding this textfile when I was a teenager back in the 80's. Never got a chance to try it out, but obviously North Korea has been trolling my old BBS...

Only North Korean Bombmakers

[Anonymous Coward]

Only North Korean Bombmakers need this information.

Oh wait, nevermind.

Next week he demonstrates

[crovira]

"How To Be A Gynacologist." (BIG geek appeal.)

But the next program in the series is a bit of a let down. Its on "How to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese"

Re:Next week he demonstrates

[idontgno]

Here's a preview:

"Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again."

Oops, sorry, sorry, wrong episode. That's the preview of "How to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, and how to rid the world of all known diseases."

Which, I guess, is in fact the specific current episode, not the next one. So it's not a preview. It's just a view. Or, in /. Python tradition, a dupe.

Try the nuke faq & friends

[johnjaydk]

Try the Nuke faq instead http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html that should give a clue as to how these things are build.

Now we need to enrich the stuff first. These guys http://www.urenco.com/ do it for a living and have a few nifty articles on centrifuges.

We also need a suitable boiler to make the good stuff(tm). My personal favorite is the Canadian (take that you pacifists) Candu design http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/.

This should get you in the WMD business in no time. Now don't try this at home unless you've got your own TV-show...

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we moderate the bomb +5 funny?

more detail here

[cahiha]

There is a whole range of enrichment methods; see here for an overview. Note the article on EMIS and use by the Iraqis. Furthermore, the chemical exchange processes sound like something competent chemical engineers could implement. And I suspect that with improvements in materials, computers, and chemical engineering, such processes become cheaper and easier to implement.

I think we'll just have to face the fact that nuclear weapons will become accessible to many more nations over the coming decades.

Link also known as.....

[IceSabre]

you too can be on a government watchlist by clicking here.

They aren't getting the joke

[jidar]

Hrm, I see that a ton of captain obvious wannabes are pointing out that this isn't actually everything you need to know.. and then getting modded up +5. lol

I really didn't expect so many people to take the article so seriously when it was obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Don't forget Niger...

[The Angry Mick]

And as usual, most of the best places to get the materials you need are college campuses

I hear that they have a pretty good supply of "yellow cake".

Re:Don't forget Niger...

[poopdeville]

MMMMMMMMM.... Caaaaake.

Terrorist Handbook

[ndansmith]

Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears has some farily detailed info (some of which he deliberately altered) on the process of nuclear bomb production.

Thankfully, terrorists don't read Clancy and have never used an idea from one of his books as an inspiration for a terrorist attack. Er...

If the worker bees die, so what?

[crovira]

I don't think that a cadre of suicide bombers has a 401k and that they get into it because of the dental plan.

That's what is scary about it.

Good motivator, fear...

Re:If the worker bees die, so what?

[Retric]

If you kill off a 20 man crew every week it's going to be hard to get anything done. A project like this would take 10's if not 100's of people working everyday for a few months most of which would die vary quickly if they did not take proper safety precautions.

It's a lot harder to build a dirty bomb than it is to build a simple atomic bomb.

The physics are straitforward

[slam smith]

The physics of nuclear weapons are rather straitforward. The tricky part is the Logistics (obtaining the raw resources), and the Engineering of the device to get it to actually work.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

[jidar]

Wait, are you saying that if I wanted to bulid a nuclear bomb I'd have to do more research than merely RTFA?
I don't believe it!

Love the +5, that's hilarious.

Roland! Roland! Roland!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

When I read the little Slashdot snip, I thought of Roland!

Re:Roland! Roland! Roland!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. Like we don't get enough of him already without you inserting him into the comments.

Re:Roland! Roland! Roland!

[Da_Biz]

No kidding. Goooooooooooooal!!!

Re:Roland! Roland! Roland!

[Anonymous Coward]

Roland of Gilead?

No formal training

[amightywind]

Of course, if a Slashdotter with no formal training in nuclear science can desribe how bombs are built, is there any question as to why nuclear materials are carefully controlled?

If I remember correctly you are a charlatan whose deep knowledge of nuclear science comes from a Wikipedia page. You should not be so quick to separate yourself from those lowly slashdotters with no formal training.

Re:No formal training

[AKAImBatman]

You should not be so quick to separate yourself from those lowly slashdotters with no formal training.

(raises eyebrow) I was referring to myself.

Re:No formal training

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a moron. The sentence you're whining about was obviously self-referential.

big missing "yeah but" on reprocessing & pluto

[KDN]

The reprocessing slide has a big "yeah but" missing. Yes, you do get plutonium-239 by reprocessing spent fuel. But you also get plutonium-240 at the same time. What's the difference? The existence of pu-240 almost killed the plutonium bomb in WW2. Pu240 releases a lot of neutrons spontanously. In a reactor this is generally not a problem. In a weapon, you want the neutron count to go from almost zero to through the roof within microseconds. The original plutonum bomb was to be a cannon bomb like the uranium one. But the speed at which the plutonium cores came together was too slow to avoid having the pu240 set the reaction off prematurely and thus killing most of the yield. They solved this by (a) limiting the time fuel was in the reactor, and (b) going to the implosion model.

April Fools?

[Pampusik]

Is it April Fools' Day or Memorial Day weekend???

This is the dumbest thing posted on Slashdot to date. Kudos to Zonk for posting what he learned in kindergarten science...

Only a bigot...

[Anonymous Coward]

...would automatically assume that the article submitter is American.

Been done, and done!, and done!!.

[Artifakt]

Tom Clancy gave away more information than this in his book, "The Sum of All Fears", published in 1991. He at least mentioned how the Berylium shell involves a topologically complex construction of helically nested tubes, and a few other significant details. He also went into the health hazards of being a Pu 239 machinist, and several other salient points, all public knowledge and unclassified.
When Union Carbide sponsored "The 20th Century", most of the information in the BBC article was broadcast in the mid 1960's, along with a design for a nuclear powered family automobile, the Ford "Nucleon" (20,000 miles to a tank of U 235).
Just after Hiroshima/Nagasaki (about 1948 or 9), John Campbell and several SF authors of the day collaborated on publishing a design for an A-Bomb that did not require high explosive initiators. It was to be built, presumably by spys or infiltrators, inside an abandoned apartment block or similar building. The core was a sphere with a conical section missing. The missing piece was dropped four stories down a vacuum filled guide tube to get the boom part. Campbell, Isaac Asimov and others published pages and pages of calculations debating whether gravity could bring the material together fast enough to get more than a fizzle and such things, over several months, all without giving away any information that was actually classified. They named specific explosives used in real devices and discussed whether this technique could let saboteurs build a bomb that would be undetectable by chemical explosive sensors of the day. All this came out in "Astounding Science Fiction".

Old article

[Josilot]

This article is not new. According to several of the pages, the last updates came in March-October of 2004. I was looking on the main BBCNews page, as well as the technology and science pages, and could not find any mention of this article. Why is it just now being posted on /.?

Much better pictures

[PMuse]

in the BBC piece, but this article provides more info on the practicalities of acquiring the materials and actually building the device.

Re: Simple: and elegant.

[mikael]

Because it is dated from 2003, as can be seen from the URL:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2003/nuc lear_fuel_cycle/mining/default.stm

And it was part of high-school physics to know how nuclear reactors (fission/fusion) work or should work.

Obligatory UHF

[dkleinsc]

Philo: Welcome to Secrets of the Universe. Today, we are going to learn to make weapons-grade plutonium from common household items.

Not only in America

[iamlucky13]

Perhaps you didn't notice the article was on BBC?

Not to mention the fact that there's dumb people everywhere you go. When you're done being bitter about being forced to live in America, you should do a reality check.

Re:Not only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but to be fair, the article wasn't claiming to be a nuclear weapons how-to. That part can be attributed to the USian submitter.

Channelling Homer...

[Jivecat]

Mmmmm... yellowcake.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Victor Tramp]

ya think the rain will hurt the rubarb?

not if it's in cans!!

Nth Country Experiment

[Kyru]

Interesting story I remember reading related to this.

The jist is that the government asked a couple of highly educated men (both Physics PhDs) to see if they could figure out how to develop a nuclear bomb without access to any classified information back in the 60s. The idea is that any random country could get a hold of people like this, so what are the odds any random country could develop the bomb.

The results, the hardest part of process would be access to the fissle material, but the bomb they developed would've been on the scale of the Hiroshima bomb. An interesting article overall.

Alternative Reactors

[PMuse]

Nice of BBC to pick such an old, dangerous reactor design. They could at least have mentioned pebble bed or other current designs.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Walt Dismal]

Hey wait! They forgot to mention splitting beer atoms is a cheap source of energy in Australia.

Is this a joke??

[Anonymous Coward]

I cant believe this made slashdot. This is like nuclear power for 6th graders. Seriously. It is below what we learned in high school, and waaay below what we talked about fall term back when I was in freshman nuclear engineering.

Re:Is this a joke??

[Anonymous Coward]

let me be the first to say

You must be new to slashdot

Chemical Weapons are Scarier

[ta ma de]

Nuclear weapons, though the theory of operations is easy to understand, making them is a difficult process. Refining U-235 is no small undertaking. Chemical weapons seem to be a larger threat and I'm surprised at how infrequently terrorists have used them. My Chem text book contains formulas and structure, though not stereo-chemistry, for phosgene, mustard gas and sarin, all of which seem like an easy synthesis. I'm not going to propose how I would produce them -- I thought it was irresponsible for them to be included in the text books to begin with. They are all small molecules that could be made with readily available ingredients that would raise no flags if ordered. The only possible explanation as to why they haven't been used is the average terrorist has a grade school education and is illiterate. Let us hope they remain stupid.

Stop Clicking links on this Article!

[g-san]

In other Top Secret news, DHS has setup packet sniffers on most transatlatlic cables. A story was submitted to slashdot about how to build nuclear bombs and other details about uranium enrichment. An IT representative from DHS was reported as saying, "Our terrorism database can hardly keep up with the updates we've had this morning. But we are getting some really good leads."

Of course they also saw my packets on the way to slashdot with the sniffers that were already in place, so I guess I'll leave home for the afternoon.

The Los Alamos Primer

[602]

During the Manhattan Project, Robert Serber periodically gave lectures on basic fission bomb physics to newly arrived scientists. Those lecture notes were published by Univ. of California Press in 1992 as "The Lost Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb"; it's still in print. You'll need at least sophomore-level physics to understand it.

---
The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons.

Should read "...explains nothing of what you might need to know..."

Chemical Engineering HOW-TO

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Learn a little chemistry.
2. Learn a little engineering.
3. Take the FE exam.
4. Take the PE exam.
5. Profit!

Woooo, security leak

[davidmcw]

... and then you get a couple of lumps of Uranium, not too big though, and bang them together, you should really be quite far away when banging them together... voila a bomb

If I can find out How to dismantle an atomic bomb

[vijaya_chandra]

for a few bucks what's so special in bbc publishing something about building one?!!?

Pure Freedom

[Chagatai]

The United States of America has no need for such rudimentary devices as centrifuge plants. Our pure, Grade A, one-of-a-kind type of Freedom makes the atoms settle in different layers so we can build our peacekeeping devices to stop terrorists and provide more freedom. It's like a breeder reactor, but here in the US of A, it's a Freedom Reactor, sir!

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[rubycodez]

no, if the nucleus of any kind of atom is split it's called nuclear fission, whether or not by chain reaction, and whether or not net energy is released.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[shokk]

In other news, here is how to make your own Sun!

Just gather 2 × 10^30 kg of hydrogen together in one spot and watch the magic as energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission. The article can be found here.

Everything.....

[Roskolnikov]

I have a piece of host rock on my desk as a paperweight, its purple and yellow (you can guess that the yellow isn't sulfur) you can find this stuff all over the place in Colorado; After reading this veritable cookbook I figure I can get a bunch of these and using my home centrifudge (gas dryer, should be able to heat these rocks to 64 degrees right?) I should be able to get some usable fuel out of my dryers outlet (hot air, lighter U235) this should all be really simple.

Now the Plutonium fuelled bomb should be much easier as it would seem I can just drive over to Rocky Flats and pick some up with a berylium happy meal, they lost 50-80 lbs of the stuff during their hay day, all I gots to do is get me a geiger counter and go looking for it like I would jewelry at the beach; and don't forget item #1 in the plutonum bomb diagram, the trigger, a source of neutrons, or what the heck a neuron generator, think I have one of those in my car, lets see.........

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's called nuclear FUSION, dumbass.

oh yes, complete instructions

[chrismg2003]

I did not realize that explaining what a nuclear reaction was tells people where to dig and how to refine the ore. Apparently by knowing what a nuclear reaction is that tells you how to refine the ore to do it. Or was it the line "highly refined ore is required" that informed us of how to refine the uranium? Good job, you made an alarmist article that managed to get on slashdot.

Baby Teeth Bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the news, terrorist are stockpiling US baby teeth in an effort to extract the strontium 90 inorder to make a dirty bomb."

You guys are so silly!

[arfonrg]

Why are you worrying about something improbable like a nuclear attack from readily available internet information when there is a lot more dangerous weapons out there?!?

THANK GOD, for the new World ID Card ! That should keep us ALL safe!

BTW, Your OS sux, Slackware roolz

think again

[tdmg]

This "guide" is just as usful as giving a child toy blocks and telling him "this is how you build a skyscraper." Read a book about the German's nuclear program and you'll see just how hard it is to build a bomb, even with thousands of working men and brilliant minds.

slashdot is a national security threat

[thrashor]

How long until the FBI makes a request to the secret Patriot Act court for all user accounts and weblogs from slashdot? At first this sounds like a humorous and rediculous comment, until you think that one of the powers that the Patriot Act gave to the feds was the ability to look at public library records to see who has been borrowing books on aviation, chemistry, nuclear weapons, and other suspicious subjects. Does freedom have to be the price of security?

Looks like I missed.

[Colin Smith]

Yeah and it was supposed to be funny. Looks like I missed that one as well with 40% informative, 40% troll and 20% funny.

Then there's the Canadian taking it all seriously...

Re:Looks like I missed.

[geomon]

Yeah and it was supposed to be funny.

Some people have NO sense of humor! ;)

Then there's the Canadian taking it all seriously...

Damn Canadians....

BFD

[PingXao]

I was reading aboout this stuff in my World Book Encyclopedia when I was a kid. This knowledge has been more or less freely available in unclassified form for years and years and years. I'm no physicist, but the term "uranium hexafluoride" were not completely new to me either.

What they should do is a feature similar to TFA but explaining how the recenet reactor accident in England will take years to clean up and cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions. It's errily similar to Three Mile Island which took place more than 25 years ago.

I believe in 50 years the U.S. will be a heavy user of nuclear energy despite the environmental concerns people have. When the oil runs out there is no alternative that can fulfill the demand. When it comes down to a choice between not having enough electricity for "the children" and risking a 10,000 year toxic accident, you know which way people will vote.

More than anything we need some kind of truth-in-advertising regulations placed on the commercial nuclear power industry. GE and the others in that field have been telling us for decades how safe their designs are. And for decades they have been shown wrong. In the future, any company who makes, sells or operates a nuclear power facility should have its owners, its officers and its Board of Directors held personally responsible for any "accidents" that occur. Life in prison sounds like a reasonable penalty in the event of a catastrophic accident.

Having them put their asses on the line, personally, is the only way to ensure that they will deliver the safest possible systems. The cost for a nuclear power generating facility will be much higher but will still look cheap when compared with the alternatives.

Solar, wind, geothermal and other environmentally friendly sources of energy are important but the gubmint, in the name of its citizens, should have been funding research into these alternative sources for many years already and they have not. The oil is running out and when we need the electricity badly enough there will be only one place to turn to get it in large enough quantities.

Oh goody!

[Julia Cameron]

Oh goody! I knew those rocks the kids brought home would come in handy someday. They've been sitting in the basement gathering dust for months. Now I know what to do with them.

Translation please

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me my friend. Could you repeat your post in Arabic, my englash is no so good.

Re:To Slashdot, From Homeland Insecurity +1, True

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly think your right - unfortunately having read the article I am no closer to building Nuclear weapons - however America's power mad big cowboy is in possesion of dozens of these. and he would love to use them.

I'm more worried about hydrogen hydroxide (HOH)

[Urusai]

Hydroxide is an ingredient in many chemical compounds (-OH), many of which are poisonous. Hydrogen (H-) is the key component of some of the most powerful acids (H2SO4, HCl, H2NO3).

Dihydrogen oxide (H2O), however, is composed of environmentally friendly and healthful oxygen in conjunction with mostly harmless (H2) hydrogen (inflammable, but not poisonous).

Some people are just overly alarmist.

Wrong, Einstein

[smartfart]

The sun works on nuclear fusion, not fission.

Finally, a good use...

[szlab]

Well, at least I know what to do with all of my old orange Fiestaware now.

I had some krytrons once.....

[milktoastman]

Well, my LAB had some in a triggering device for an experiment (a very mundane experiment...nothing dangerous). But they burn out very quickly from continuous use and they are now gone. Didn't realize at the time that they were useful for bombs and that they were no longer on the market, or I wouldn't have left the equipment on for so long at a time! NOTE to any subversives reading this: We don't have them anymore. Don't bother trying me. I wouldn't even give you the time of day if we did.

Re:I had some krytrons once.....

[Rei]

That sounds about right - as few as a couple hundred shots will fry them. They're used in all sorts of high-tech equipment - some laser firing circuits, some pulse welding applications, and various medical machines. Basically, wherever very precise timing on discharge is wanted. But you better believe that sales on such equipment are carefully monitored :) Also, any country under dual-use sanctions will likely be unable to import such equipment.

Re:I had some krytrons once.....

[milktoastman]

I'm in the US and it's not worthwhile to try and get them. I wouldn't want the scrutiny. But, I'm probably being scrutinized by the authorities for even posting these messages about them.

Damned metric-illiterate people

[fbform]

obtain about 50 pounds (110 kg) of weapons grade Plutonium at your local supplier

People who get confused by conversion factors should not be allowed anywhere near weapons grade Pu.

Ah, physics submissions are always trollbait

[krisamico]

And Lo, the academic Trolls did come forth to criticize the article's lack of depth, and there was much gnashing of teeth.

This article does exactly what it says. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to a presentation I had to give for my high school AP physics classmates in 1988, though I seem to remember focusing on how breeder reactors actually work. In any case, I thought the article was a good one, and most of the criticism of the /. elitists in here is both laughable and lamentable.

Small point...

[greppy]

but did anyone notice the title of the page is:-

"BBC NEWS | In Depth | 2003 | Nuclear fuel cycle | mining"

It's a bit late to be panicking about information that has been available at least 2 years. Besides, this is no more advanced than most High School Physics lessons across the UK and hardly enough to start refining and processing nuclear fuel.

Thanks for helping me study...

[PhrstBrn]

for my High School Chemistry test.

Kitchen knives should be banned...

[mikael]

Here's another suggestion for improved world safety; Kitchen knives should be banned.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[norton_I]

U-238 produces a large fraction of the yield in many "fusion" bombs. Depleted U-238 is used as a tamper to confine the fusion fuel, which produces fast neutrons and cause fission of the U-238. This has a higher yield to mass ratio than a straight up fusion bomb, but produces more fallout.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[zerus]

I think you mean Pu-239 since 92% of that by atom percent is "weapons grade." The 238 is an neutron absorber, which is opposite to what you want in a highly supercritical system. Also it absorbs more at thermal energy ranges and not so much the fast/resonance region of plutonium. The initial fusion design used the compression method, but that was jamming one side of a sphere against the other creating the "critial mass" (amount of fuel required by diffusion theory to create a self sustaining reaction), from there the fuel begins a highly supercritical reaction and explodes mostly inwards due to blocking by the shell of the warhead. Then the D-T reaches high enough temperatures ~5keV and the fusion takes place which overshadows any yield by the fission portion.

Reprocessing spent fuel isn't bad at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what I don't get about this article, they totally leave out anything about reprocessing spent fuel except for using the plutonium for weapons. They don't mention that the vast majority of nuclear fuel is still useable and that only a small fraction of the initial U-235 is actually used. That combines with the benefits of creating more fuel by means of U-238 absorbing a neutron and decaying into Pu-239,240,241 and upwards to more fissionable minor actinides. What other kind of energy system do you have that creates waste that can be reused to create more energy? Coal sure doesn't do that. If anything we should encourage reprocessing since the Japanese and French have developed excellent chemical separations flow processes for it (DIAMEX and DIDPA if you're curious, I prefer the 4-stage DIDPA myself). This article also left out the possibility of high level waste reduction by transmuting the minor actinides either in another reactor or spallation facility. I guess this just shows you how when the people don't understand a technology, they choose to remain ignorant instead of learning about it.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[rgmoore]

I think you mean Pu-239 since 92% of that by atom percent is "weapons grade."

Nope, he got it essentially correct. 238U won't sustain a chain reaction, but it will fission if it's hit by a high energy neutron. Because D-D and D-T fusion produce large numbers of neutrons, this means that 238U placed near the fusion part of the bomb will undergo fast fission and add to the bomb's yield. Since the fusion tamper needs to be made of a dense, high atomic number material anyway, using Uranium for the tamper increases the yield essentially for free. The only reasons not to use Uranium for the tamper are to reduce fallout (since the fast fission produces lots of secondary radioactives) or to maximize the amount of fast neutron radiation that the bomb produces (which is the principle behind the "neutron" bomb). Some bomb designs apparently use moderately enriched Uranium rather than natural or depleted Uranium because it helps the yield, but AFAIK none of them use 239Pu for this.

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[norton_I]

Actually, I meant U-238 (though, according to nuclearweaponarchive.org, it is likely that the US and others use enriched uranium as the tamper to get the highest yield possible).

You don't want to absorb neutrons in a fission bomb, or in the trigger stage of a thermonuclear bomb, since they will moderate the chain reaction. However, once fusion begins, a huge number of very fast neutrons will be produced. These can be made to start fast-fission in U-238 or other "non-fissionable" isotopes, providing potentially more energy than the fusion reaction itself.

ReWhy the Dems lost the election.

[JJ]

"The Reagan arms shipments to Iran might have reached a value of $82B. Even the smaller, officially admitted figures account for TOW missiles illegally shipped through Israel, which were strategically valuable to Iran in its Iraq war. That's what "Iran/Contra" was (half) about, but I suppose you've got some kind of "legitimate" explanation that excuses that illegal guns/drugs/policy scam."

$82 billion? That's hysterical!!

According to http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch7.html

the total was $38 million. The TOW missles were surplus, Ollie North got them because he divereted them from being scrapped. The Hawk missle was being abandonded by the US and NATO.

Having been an infantry company level officer, I can tell you that 2,000 TOW missles wouldn't have made a dent in the war. They probably could have put a few dozen, max 100 Iraqi tanks out of the war. Considering Sadaam had built the seventh largest army in the world and third largest tank army, that would have no effect on the war.

Your 'reliable' secretary is 85 years old, resides in a nursing home and missidentifed which Bush she was speaking of the first time CBS News tried to confirm the memos. Were she supportive of the President, you'd call her biased.

Re:ReWhy the Dems lost the election.

[Doc Ruby]

So you quoted the lower official figures I cited, for just some TOW missiles. How about all the aircraft parts? Manucher Ghorbanifar (back in his old parking space at NSA, with the rest of his Iran/Contra crew, including Bolton) and the rest of those arms dealers like Richard Secord don't play for peanuts like $38M. You're in some deep denial when you're pretending that Iran/Contra was nearly nonexistent.

As for the old secretary, she was there. Bush was not - no records at all, except for the ones implicating him, and one dental record. But you think it's all just a misunderstanding when he avoided Vietnam any way possible for Bush Sr's kid. Then sent us to war in Iraq by lying and totally misunderstanding or disregarding the consequences. You probably think all this persistent Iran/Iraq/Bush insanity is just a coincidence.

Is this article a honeypot for terrorists?

[ElAurian]

If the appropriate British intelligence agency wanted to cause any terrorists that might have the capability of building a bomb to irradiate themselves, this might be a good way.

The faulty instructions could also, more likely, cause an accident in the facilities they're using. This might be visible from orbit or just from the general area.

Disinformation for terrorists who already have uranium?

Old news

[macshome]

I read this same article sometime last year on BBC. I figured it would have dropped off the site a long time ago.

3rd party confirmation ...

[willtsmith]

Multiple ex-detainees have reported that the Koran was deliberately mistreated during their stay INCLUDING the book being put in the toilet and the toilet being flushed. Obviously, it couldn't go down the drain.

The CBS story was factually correct. But they screwed up royally by not following up on the leads that Killian gave them. The fonts and kerning in the document were perfectly capable of being produced by typewriters in the possession of the TANG in 1972. The secretary was clear that she didn't type them, nor would anyone in TANG since they formatted their docs different and used different lingo.

I'm not sure how "biased" you can accuse Dan Rather of being. His researchers screwed up the story investigation. He followed up with a secretary that positively debunked the documents as being originals. He corrected himself unlike the countless right wing shills working in the corporate media.

And of course, the secretary made it VERY clear that she had indeed typed documents to the effect as expressed in the "reproductions". The son had no way of knowing what exactly went on in the office. If you want to know what goes on in an office, you ask a secretary.

I find it very interesting that the White House has yet to retract any of it's BS. It has never admitted misleading the press with forged documents during the 2000 election regarding the very same issue.

Bush has had an EASY ride with the press. And it's no doubt considering that Bush can kill or move forward legislation allowing the 5 familes (the five corporations that own MOST of the media) to further consolidate their holdings on the American mindshare.

If you have ANY doubt about the "liberal media", you need only look to the 8 years of Clinton as president when that media printed COUNTLESS BS stories about things that were nothing more than scurrilous accusations. In many cases those accusations could EASILY be debunked, but the media was no inclined to do so.

Selling weapons to terrorists ...

[willtsmith]

Not only did Reagan violate the law by selling those weapons, he also flew in the face of his own prohibitions against dealing with terrorists.

The funniest part of the whole incident is that Reagan violated his policy even BEFORE he made it when he negotiated with the Iyatollah to hold the prisoners until AFTER he was sworn in to office.

Don't forget about the tubes ...

[willtsmith]

Yes, ALUMINUM TUBES!!! DANGEROUS, EVIL ...

[b]ANODIZED[/b]

I suppose one would need a coffee pot to keep scientists alert while building a nuke. So we should put them on a list of weapons materials as well.

I find it far more likely that Hussein was working on the top secret "Arab Bicycle" with those aluminum tubes.

There are other sources

[core plexus]

"It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores."

Actually, ore is a term that is dependant upon numerous factors, including but not limited to: current economics, access, and mode of occurrence.

For example, radioactive minerals may be found in placer deposits, and can be recovered as a byproduct or coproduct of the primary mineral target (e.g. placer gold). When a mineral is produced as a byproduct of the primary recovery operation, its occurrence by volume need be only a fraction than if it were the primary target of recovery.

As an example, our mines produce uraniothoriante (uranium and thorium mixed) as a byproduct of our placer operations. There have been numerous studies dating to before the 1940's that documented the volume in various deposits contained within our lands. Usually we just throw it back. But if we had a market (a buyer) for it, we would sell it. We also produce halfnium, and many other minerals.

-cp-

On a related note: Full Metal Options Boulder Creek Uranium Deposit to Garnet Point

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

The rain or the rhubarb?

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[zerus]

If that were the case, natural uranium ore would be a critical system with itself as a moderator, but that just isn't the case. If you look at the cross section graphs for Pu-239 as compared to U-238 for the fast energy range http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/ton/index.html

Re:Fission? No kidding!

[zerus]

Don't know where most of my last post went, so I'll submit it again

If that were the case, natural uranium ore would be a critical system with itself as a moderator, but that just isn't the case. If you look at the cross section graphs for Pu-239 as compared to U-238 for the fast energy range from greater than 1eV to ~10MeV, you'll see that the microscopic cross sections for absorption are relatively similar between the two isotopes which is ~1 barn, as to be expected since both are fertile isotopes that absorb to higher-Z elements, but that is for only for absorption which has mixed effects for a supercritical system. What you have to look at is what the isotope does with that absorbed neutron, which is referred to as the fission cross section. That for the Pu-239 is close to 1 barn for the entire fast spectrum including resonances, yet the fission cross section for U-238 is on the order of 10^-5 barns, which means that this is extremely, extremely unlikely to occur. So you must have read a typo or they meant to say U-235, because U-238 does not fast fission often as it is considered non-fissile, otherwise the Navy would be using natural uranium in their subs and carriers because it is loads cheaper than plutonium.

Former BNL site for table of the nuclides, now at KAERI if you want to compare cross sections.
http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/ton/index.html