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Wikileaks Releases Early Atomic Bomb Diagram
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has released a diagram of the first atomic weapon, as used in the Trinity test and subsequently exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, together with an extremely interesting scientific analysis. Wikileaks has not been able to fault the document or find reference to it elsewhere. Given the high quality of other Wikileaks submissions, the document may be what it purports to be, or it may be a sophisticated intelligence agency fraud, designed to mislead the atomic weapons development programs of countries like Iran. The neutron initiator is particularly novel. 'When polonium is crushed onto beryllium by explosion, reaction occurs between polonium alpha emissions and beryllium leading to Carbon-12 & 1 neutron. This, in practice, would lead to a predictable neutron flux, sufficient to set off device.'"
I have tried to make a bomb with this diagram and I have had no problems with the designs. I guess it must b[NO CARRIER]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Ok we get it, wikileaks has a lot of cool shit to check out, but this is getting redundant.
It's not news to say "Hey look wikileaks has XXX up". People can goto wikileaks themselves and see without you guys posting it like its real news.
But I thought the mechanics of such a device were pretty well understood? Don't they just divide a sphere with sufficient critical mass into "pie" pieces and then just use explosives to force all the pieces together at the appropriate time? (I'm sure it's not quite THAT simple.)
Cheers,
Now where did I leave my spare polonium?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Having the plans, and having the tooling and know-how to actually follow the plans to get a working device are two hugely different matters.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Now all we need is someone to come up with a working design on Hackaday and we're all set
hmmm I wonder if distilling the Americium from fire detectors for a Dirty bomb would be better
...am I the only one who thinks that this sort of information is a little too important to "leak"? I mean, I'm all in favour of free information and stuff but surely there comes a point when you have to exercise a little bit of judgement?
This probably isn't going to go down well in these parts - but there are some people out there who really don't need any more encouragement in this direction than they already have. Surely this is the engineering equivalent of child porn...
--- Nick, hard at work
...word on the matter of atomic bombs:
boom.
I expect that this is going to get Wikileaks a lot of publicity, but I think it may be harmful publicity-- whenever they try to claim that they're doing a useful service, people are now going to point at this and say "yeah, and also publishing plans for weapons."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
that mass quantities of crude fission weapons have their uses. For example, if we ever get invaded by technologically-advanced, elephantine aliens, we'll need them as fuel for our gigantic spacegoing attack platform.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"When polonium is crushed onto beryllium by explosion, reaction occurs between polonium alpha emissions and beryllium leading to Carbon-12 & 1 neutron. This, in practice, would lead to a predictable neutron flux, sufficient to set off device." ;-)
Wikipedia gives the half-life of the most commonly used Polonium isotope with about 138 days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium
This may be fine for a bomb that is to be used shortly after manufacture, but not for a warhead that is supposed to sit in a missile silo for years. Of course, the USA wanted to use the bomb on Japan, so long-term storagewas not an issue
C - the footgun of programming languages
What exactly is so "novel" about the description of the neutron initiator? This design of the "urchin" has been known for decades and hasn't been novel since the 50's. No one even uses them anymore due to unpredictability, all implosion weapons use pulsed neutron generators based on fusion of deuterium with tritium. If anything, the document merely serves to confirm that we've been right about our ideas on how the thing originally worked.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Back in the mid 70's, Electronics Australia (hobbyist HAM radio and electronics magazine - now defunct) did a mock project that showed you how to make a non-portable atomic bomb. The design was based on firing a large uranium bullet at a uranium target. The target was encased with several tonnes of concrete in order to contain the critical mass long enough for an explosion to occur. In the article they talked about how construction of the bomb would basically kill the workers, which at the time seemed stupid, but in these days of suicide bombers seems reasonable.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...until the design which involves a pringles can is available.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
"...atomic weapons development programs of countries like Iran"
Starting to believe in your own propaganda can be an indicator that there is something in your tap water.
No, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
The Slashdot love for Wikileaks seems childish and immature. I understand that "information wants to be free" and that "censorship is bad", but I think we need to recognize that there is a limit to the healthy release of this sort of information. There's a reason you can't find this kind of material in a library, and it's not because they want to "repress your thoughts" or make you into a "(insert favorite conspiracy theory here) drone".
Obviously we would have little problems if these were plans for a gun instead of a nuclear device, and both kill people. But it seems like we should exercise some judgment before we decide that all information about everything should be available to all people all the time. "Woah! Cool! Nuclear Weapons plans! I bet we'd get a lot of press if we released THOSE!" seems like poor justification for wanting to distribute material of this kind.
I'm uncomfortable with this, and I'm sure others are too. There's a difference between sharing with P2P, sharing scientific information, and sharing nuclear weapons plans, especially on a site called "Wikileaks". The first I can justify by saying, "Lots of good stuff is shared on P2P". The first I second justify by saying, "Although these journals may technically hold the copyright on this information, the American people paid for it and it's ultimately good to release scientific information to the public." The third is ultimately pretty tough to justify. If Wikileaks was instead a book about "Engineering the World War" and parts of the plans were released to diagram how the allies used particular types of circuitry, I think I'd be okay with it. But simply releasing plans like this for no other reason than attention whoring seems at best like an incredibly severe lapse in judgement. And I'm ashamed to be part of a community that is supporting it.
Now that Wikileaks has the bomb, people will think twice about trying to shut it down!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
This isn't complete. It omits an important detail that has never appeared in US open publications but has appeared in some materials from the former USSR.
What this looks like is close to what Klaus Fuchs gave to the Russians when he was spying at Los Alamos. A similar rough sketch was published decades ago, but not one with dimensions.
Thank you for contributing to nuclear weapons proliferation... Looks like you did...
Hopefully, there is, indeed, a fault in there somewhere, which Wikileaks were either sincerely unable to find or are simply lying about having missed.
These — along with their recent run-in with the judge — raises important questions, however. Are there secret documents in existence, that WikiLeaks would refuse to make available if given?
I mean, if it is not an ancient (though just as deadly) nuclear bomb design, but something more recent? How about plans for America's invasion of Iran or North Korea? What about the plans for our defense of Taiwan — there must be some uncomfortable answers to ugly questions in there...
What about civil government? A police-department's plans for riot-prevention, or a coordinated anti-drug raid?
What about "personal" secrets? How about a politician's diary? How about that of a CEO of a big corporation — he may have recorded private thoughts in there, such as whether his secretary is genuinely more affectionate to him, than his wife?
When does "strong transparency" turn into treason, obstructing justice, or invasion of privacy?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
with the return of Battlebots. Absolutely, positively nothing at all. Move along, gents, these aren't the plans you're looking for.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
In a high-profile First Ammendment case Howard Morland and the Progressive tried to publish Fusion-bomb (aka "Hydrogen bomb") design details in 1979. The government eventually dropped its case
Here's the book; http://www.amazon.com/Secret-That-Exploded-Howard-Morland/dp/0394512979
and a background artcile by Howard on his deductions and something of the legal case http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/cardozo.html
oh yeah - even Greenpeace seem to have pretty pictures - wouldn't trust those guys to assemble one though http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/fig05.gif
peter xyz
Very archive looking draft sketch, but if you've got the infrastructure, it's a start.
(that's a BIG if)
A U235 design would be more interesting, if only from a "KISS principle" pov, but then again, the main problem is where to get useful amounts of fissionables.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Uk/BritishBombPlans.html
People interested in nuclear weapon design, like the author of nuclearweaponarchive.org have had a copy of that picture for quite some time. The layout of the explosives is actually a truncated icosahedron, so the diagram is a 2d simplification of a 3d idea.
I wouldn't back up your argument with technical theory on the Internet! Apparently it's the engineering equivalent of child porn . . .
Ah, found it. It seems to be from the Nuclear Weapon archive. It doesn't appear to be an American document at all, rather something that a British scientist, William Penney, prepared to inform the British government what would be required to build its own bomb.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Either to discredit wikileaks (Bait taken), or trace people who are interested in these types of plans.
There was a book with diagrams of the basic design of both the gun type bomb (Hiroshima) and the implosion bomb (Nagasaki) in the library at my High School around 72, 73. They used to have a rough diagram of the Trinity bomb at White Sands National Monument along with some of the green glass formed by the blast.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It's a shame this development came 40 some years after J. Robert Oppenheimer's death. He pushed to have this controlled by the U.N. and, because the American Government was so open minded, he lost all of his security clearance.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Polonium production was well understood. In fact, why do you think it's called Polonium? Because MMe Curie isolated it and named it, that's why. The manufacturing route was well understood and it was well characterised. It has many advantages - including the short half life which means that, a relatively short time after you have lost a bomb or had it stolen, it cannot produce an explosion any more. It is also "safe" - you can even use it for poisoning inconvenient Russian ex-KGB men, for which you would not want to carry a vial of Ra around London.
I was wondering what to do with my little brother for his 6th grade science competition. Thanks Wikileaks!
All those parts, they are part of a pinball machine.
Mod parent up, that's the mistake that both GP and GGP made.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not so simple. Sure you can place rules upon those who own weapons and apply those to yourself to be "fair." But who defines the rules? You do. Naturally, you make it so you pass your own test and when you don't you modify or re-interpret the rules you made but expect others to have to live by.
The USA is known for doing just that; more consistently and frequently in recent times.
Mutually assured destruction is a big part of it; if you don't have it you can be invaded. Problem is groups not tied to a location getting the weapons because there is no counter strike to deter them.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The leaks that were coming out were pretty pathetic to begin with and not to mention the ones that were completely fabricated but exaggerated to hell around this site.
Could see some use for this site but it seems to me that it is going to turn into one big conspiracy theorists wet dream; not too much credibility going into it and the paranoid crowd on the internet have well been known to flood places like that with false facts.
...just to show how old this design is, all the measurements are in inches. I mean, who uses inches anymore? hehe ;P
There was a more current, and weapons-oriented posting of nuclear secrets on the Homeland Security web site. So, with the expected screaming of "terrorist secrets" and security risks I expect from the usual, mouth-foaming suspects,... they'd better worry more about the group that pretends to fight the bogey-man if they want to worry about security leaks.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
does not mean that you should. This may be a primitive nuclear weapon, and it may even be incomplete, but FFS. It's a nuclear weapon. A weapon of mass destruction. We don't have to worry about only rogue governments using WMDs, we also have to worry about a well-funded group of fanatical terrorists, who have members perfectly willing to die to attack their enemies.
I'm usually among the first to excoriate the Bush Administration for their fear mongering, power grabs, and excesses, but *come on*.
Cat's out of the bag on this one, but I would not be upset at all if Wikileaks got shut down and the responsible parties sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
All this stuff has been around the block at least a few times. It is not "child porn" at all. It is more like a movie of a 60-year-old, tired whore.
Am I the only person who thinks this stinks of politics? Take fairly common knowledge that appears to be dangerous in the wrong hands and post it to a controversial leak site. Bam, they are now in league with terrorism and some greater authority needs to shut them down for the public good.
All your base are belong to us.
You are on the way to destruction.
are these part of the same set that top level republicans (richard pearle, Douglas Feith, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Cheney, etc) sold to turkey and pakistan? Or was it all the plans for W-76, which was the current warhead at the time that these traitors did this?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Or something like that...
No sig today...
I don't care how they spelled "fuse", no one in the US spells Al "aluminium" (unless they actually *want* a wedgie). So I don't buy the argument that the author must have been American and not British.
The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build an Atomic Bomb has been around for a long time. It covers the nuclear physics of the atomic bomb. Anyone with a bachelor's degree in physics can understand it completely (anyone else: unlikely). The nuclear part is the easy part. The hard parts of making an atomic bomb are (1) separating isotopes to make fissable material and (2) constructing the chemical explosives to generate enough compression to insure a good nuclear reaction. The item on Wikileaks is a rough sketch in the direction of #2.
The United states.
>Neither Iran nor North Korea have waged wars of aggression in the past 50 years.
North Korea hasn't waged a war of aggression in the past 50 years... for a reason. The korean war ended with the south free because there were US troups at the border to keep north korean troops from taking the south.
Iran I agree may be exaggerated as a threat, but you should consider the roll that America's wars have played in history over the past 50 years.
Cold War Era:
The Korean War
Lebanon crisis of 1958
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Dominican Intervention
Vietnam War
Tehran hostage rescue
Grenada
Beirut
Panama
Post Cold War Era:
Gulf War
Somalia
Yugoslavia
Bush Era:
Afghanistan
Philippines
Liberia
Iraq
A lot of these conflicts had minor US involvement, but I've listed them for completeness (Liberia involved sending "three warships with 2,300 Marines into view of the coast," and funding Economic Community of West African States troops.)
What should be most notable about every last one of these wars, is that while some of them were major mistakes, all of them were in defense of pretty much every first world democratic country, and not just the united states.
People seem to enjoy bashing the United States for it's mistakes, and sometimes we deserve it, but the truth is that the current balance of power has benefited pretty much everyone posting on slashdot. There have been no new world wars for a reason. The soviet union ended it's domination of europe, and was not able to press in further than they did for a reason. Every first world nation prizes it's military alliance with the US for a reason.
The truth is that the roll that the US plays is maintaining a balance of power with democratic nations at the top, and dictatorial nations at the bottom. The truth is that without the US forces there to maintain that balance of power, this would end quickly. The other first world nations do not have comparable military forces, and largely don't have the forces necessary to defend themselves from their neighbors.
Consider what would have happened without US forces to maintain the ballance of power:
1. In the cold war, pretty much all of Europe would have ended up in soviet hands.
2. South Korea would fall to North Korea *immediately* if US forces weren't there to back them up.
3. Taiwan would end up in Chinese hands *today* if the US wasn't committed to defending them from invasion.
4. Pakistan would have difficulty surviving without US military aid.
5. Israel probably wouldn't survive without US backing.
Israel is probably the most controversial of those choices, and a lot of people, myself included, are pretty unhappy with how they treat the palestinians, but I don't think anyone wants to see Israel destroyed (well... except for the people trying to destroy it) as that would cost considerably more lives than the current conflict.
So while it may be reasonable to criticize specific US actions, it's pretty ridiculous to act like you don't want the US there defending your interests, or that you're unhappy with the status quo.
The answer is you could so long as you do not want something that works. To get something that worked, you would need metallurgists, textile and plastics engineers, mechanical engineers, a foundry, several machine shops, the correct raw materials, heat treastment, plating plants and skilled fitters. With all that, you would probably decide to design and build your own engine instead. The Wikileaks diagram misses off two highly important features of a bomb, but even if you knew that, you still could not build one from it. From the diagram you know nothing about the purity of the ingredients, the allowed contaminants, the actual explosives in use, or indeed a whole lot of other things. If you have enough knowledge and the facilities to produce all the things you would need to duplicate the bomb, then believe me, you have physicists and engineers enough to be able to build one anyway.And with all the technical progress since then, you would probably find it easier and cheaper to use a different design.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
All those parts, they are part of a pinball machine.
Those Libyan terrorists are gonna be pissed.
Right.. Nuke an entire nation of innocent people so that they cannot at some undefined point in the future, perhaps maybe develop a nuclear bomb. That makes a lot of sense..
Ever considered what the reaction of the world would be? The impact on the recruiting of extremist groups?
You seem to be suffering from a similar ailment...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
"Great plans and quick shipping. Very recommended!!1! A+++++++"
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Stop getting your facts in our emotionally-driven debate!
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Good, now everyone including terrorists can build bombs, safety concerns about jumbo impacts are no longer valid arguments against civil nuclear powerplants.
I know the Iraqis were supposed to be the "good guys" at that point but this is a fairly odd view now that we no longer have to justify the failed Iraqi invasion of Iran as the act of an ally. When Iranian forces finally pushed the Iraqi forces back they stopped at the border. The war was brutal and has left both countries with the majority of the population too young to remember it.
...in the BBC terror-drama "Edge of Darkness", although a little artistic license was taken.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I know it is unfashionable to say so but the Cold War was over before Reagan got in and tried to restart the thing by funding rebellions all over the place. It was certainly not about playing global policeman as people like to imagine. Unfortunately the current Bush is the heir to his views and not to those of his father.
There are a few other points I disagree with but your point "2" I agree with apart from the naive time estimate. "3" will show itself to be irrelevent to even those that have never heard of Hong Kong in a few decades and nothing is likely to happen in the meantime. With point "5" Israel has not always had strong support from the USA and are in a very strong position now so should not be underestimated. Pakistan has only recently been given US military aid so I strongly disagree with what looks like a completely irrelevant point - Pakistan has at times had great difficulty surviving. As for Europe, the USSR had enough problems with what they had so were unlikely to fulfil some 1950s domino theory paranoia.
The cold warriors saving the world from barbarism idea is simplistic and flawed paticularly since there are some elements working to preserve barbarism (US forces assisting Algeria are a prime example at this time). There are good intentions and good actions but it appears that uncontrolled intelligence agencies are allowed far too often to set agendas contrary to just about everyone's interest. These bad habits learned overseas can be applied at home. In my opinion unless an emphasis is placed on the rule of law both internally and to all forces overseas the USA will fall prey to the same "might makes right" type of rule that Russia has had in various forms for a very long time. It can be argued that various spooks and assassians should never have to comply with laws but if that is the case they should be kept from having much influence on home affairs and their existance when discovered does affect international affairs.
There are usually good intentions but they are far too often subverted or ruined by people placed in postions with no regard to their competance informed by what is almost entirely remote intelligence with few on the ground to understand context or even language. A future administration may address this.
Critisicm of bad foreign policy outcomes is not criticism of the entire country. The rule of law as inherited from the British and expanded by the USA is a very good thing and it is sad to see it vanish at the hands of barbarians for the sake of expediancy with the excuse that they are not trying it at home.
except for the gallium percentage. Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer prize for this. the documents were mostly declassified years ago, like 20 and 30 years ago for most of them, in the US. get a copy of the book, some good college physics books, multi-axis milling machines, good glove-box technology, and it's doable. the hard part is the fissile material, but with the number of rogue wacko nations joining the "atomic club," any irresponsible yutz can get a good piece of it done.
for that matter, any irresponsible yutz could be transmuting their own fuel in the backyard. see "The Radioactive Boy Scout" to see how easy. in the 60s, putting out Golden Books and PR pamphlets to get kids interested in nuclear careers had enough data in them to get you thoroughly dead ten different ways trying to bootleg your own sources at home.
It's basic science, and anybody who wants to seek can find.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
figure out how to make one with this book then really you don't deserve one.
1. Get Fusionable material...
2. Compress it or not (little boy vs Fat man...) compression needs less material but requires precision explosives.
3. Get something that produces fast neutrons.
4.Boom.
Now if someone could just post the documentation on tritium or hydrogen weapons I can get back to work...
Remember the Axis of Evil? Well one of them we got medieval on (pity they're better at medieval warfare than us, but anyway...), one of them got nukes and one didn't. Guess which one we're planning to go medieval on next?
Let's say you're Mexico. Wouldn't you feel a bit more comfortable with the US having nukes than you would with, say, Nicaragua having nukes?
There's a reason for that.
paintball
I became interested in the design of nuclear weapons at the time I read "The Curve of Binding Energy" around 1980 or so I think. It may have been in the 70s some time. Anyway, I always find these conversations interesting. Mostly people just pass around pictures and information. But there are no secrets in physics and engineering and you are as likely to determine the true designs as anyone if you put in the effort. For instance. Someone mentioned the D-T tube being used to initiate nuclear explosions now. Probably not. At least not as I've seen it in diagrams. The D-T tube is a commercial source of neutrons and would be destroyed by the explosives before the core was ready for a pulse of neutrons. More likely deuterium and tritium is pumped into the core from the bomber at the time the device is armed. The detonation of the explosives would compress and heat the d-t and drive it to fusion. The resulting neutrons would initiate the nuclear reaction and give high efficiency due to the number of neutron chains produced.
It may be possible that there is no explosive compression at all now and that a D-T tube is actually the only thing needed to push a modern small design into criticality, but that needs more thought. Keep in mind there are fissionable isotopes with fission cross sections much higher than either uranium or plutonium and devices made from them would be much smaller than either a uranium or plutonium device. Perhaps one of these isotopes, sitting on the edge of criticality, could be pushed over with a blast of neutrons, making unnecessary the bulk and complexity of the old devices. Anyway, I ran across a comment by Hans Bethe a long time ago in which he basically said that they made complicated designs in those days. To me that means they made overly complicated designs and that the devices they made probably worked despite those designs and not so much because of them. I definitely believe that to be the case with regard to the Teller design of the Hydrogen bomb.
It is my opinion that in a modern fusion device a directed fission blast induces a high temperature/high pressure shockwave in the fusion fuel, actually raising its temperature to billions of degrees at the expanding shock front, causing the fuel to "burn" or undergo fusion. At these temperature you could use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as fusion fuel. The "Teller-Ulam" design we see in books is probably too complex and unnecessary. Refer to "The Curve of Binding Energy" for the idea that there are shaped fission explosions and ask yourself why would a nuclear designer know about them and want to turn them to tunneling in mountains. I doubt the idea was created FOR tunneling. More likely it was being adapted TO tunneling into mountains.
Back to fission. Replacing the uranium 238 tamper with a smaller, lighter reflector/neutron multiplier would have decreased the size and weight of the original device and increased it efficiency significantly I believe. More than the tamping of the explosion, the number of neutrons available for fission is important. Besides, beryllium itself is fissionable and there are a lot of these small atoms per unit volume.
E Proelio Veritas.
Surely they mean the first TESTED A-bomb, as the engies knew that the first one they built would work...
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
>Taiwan being a part of China for thousands of years,
>again this isn't automagically a bad thing. Oh noes they might end up like Hong Kong!!!
Taiwan was not part of China for "thousands of years," that is Chinese government propaganda. Chinese rule of Taiwan did not occur until 1683. China then had it for a while, until the Japanese took it over from 1895 until the end of world war II. Since then it has been independent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
So, China ruled Taiwan from 1683 until 1895, a period of 212 years that is now long past.
The Chinese government likes to claim that they "own" various lands for historical reasons. They do the same thing with Tibet to justify rule there. However, no one outside of China takes these claims seriously, and continuous violent crackdowns against monks don't do much to boost there claims.
Also, as I mentioned in another post, Taiwan is now democratic so it is ridiculous to suggest that they would benefit from Chinese rule, where real democracy is banned.