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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

And while we're at it . . .

[Maradine]

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

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.

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: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.

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: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.

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:How is this information of significance

[BrentRJones]

to anyone reading slashdot?