Nuclear Warhead Blueprints On Smugglers' Computers

imrehg links to a story at the Guardian which begins "Blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear warhead have been found in the computers of the world's most notorious nuclear-smuggling racket, according to a leading US researcher. The digital designs, found in heavily encrypted computer files in Switzerland, are believed to be in the possession of the US authorities and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, but investigators fear they could have been extensively copied and sold to 'rogue' states via the nuclear black market." Reader this great guy links to the New York Times article on the discovery, and asks "Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?"

Comments

Re:Garage Nukes

[El Jynx]

Sjuh... there's only one option: contain it at the source(s). Very strict contol of enrichment. That's about all one can do, and unfortunately doesn't control already distributed materials nor as yet untouched ore sources - which may become in trek if the world does get strict on ores. But methinks the only real solution is nuclear fusion. Make sure there's enough power for everyone's needs, and then some; that way we can try to kick the planet into a Golden Age and maybe the shortsighted suicidal monkeys will give it a rest and get back to masturbation instead of terrorism. God knows I'd sponsor 'em with a blowup doll or something.

Re:Garage Nukes

[fbjon]

The issue is not with building a gadget that produces an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. Putting that in a compact, reliable, and deliverable package is what takes effort.

Re:Garage Nukes

[siddesu]

That is an often-repeated statement, however there is very little in terms of facts that support it.

Building nukes, especially advanced ones in quantities over a single test weapon still requires (in addition to the plans) a large and relatively modern industrial base -- for the components, for the various explosives, for the wealth of rare materials necessary etc. etc.

Having such an industry USSR style -- for the purpose of nukes only -- is quite expensive, and out of reach of almost any country. Hence you don't see many succeeding, especially when there is resolute opposition from the superpowers to such efforts.

So, no, the nuclear cat isn't quite out of the bag yet, the weapons are out of reach of mostly every state, and those countries who make them profit very little from having them per se.

And, thankfully, nuke-building capability tom-clancy style is so far quite out of reach of any kind of terrorist group.

International forums and inspections as those that exist under the NPT regime are still the most important, effective and relevant way to keep your "nuclear cat" in the bag.

Designing the bomb is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-24-2003-42105.asp

Forty years ago a couple of physics students designed a working A bomb.

Eventually, towards the end of 1966, two and a half years after they began, they were finished. "We produced a short document that described precisely, in engineering terms, what we proposed to build and what materials were involved," says Selden. "The whole works, in great detail, so that this thing could have been made by Joe's Machine Shop downtown."

Agonisingly, though, at the moment they believed they had triumphed, Dobson and Selden were kept in the dark about whether they had succeeded. Instead, for two weeks, the army put them on the lecture circuit, touring them around the upper echelons of Washington, presenting them for cross-questioning at defence and scientific agencies. Their questioners, people with the highest levels of security clearance, were instructed not to ask questions that would reveal secret information. They fell into two camps, Selden says: "One had been holding on to the hope that designing a bomb would be very difficult. The other argued that it was essentially trivial - that a high-school science student could do it in their garage." If the two physics postdocs had pulled it off, their result, it seemed, would fall somewhere between the two - "a straightforward technical problem, but one that involves some rather sophisticated physics".

Finally, after a valedictory presentation at Livermore attended by a grumpy General Edward Teller, they were pulled aside by a senior researcher, Jim Frank. "Jim said, 'I bet you guys want to know how it turned out,'" Dobson recalls. "We said yes. And he told us that if it had been constructed, it would have made a pretty impressive bang." How impressive, they wanted to know. "On the same order of magnitude as Hiroshima," Frank replied.

Re:NSA, anyone

[dfn_deux]

Even with the materials, building any sort of nuclear weapon, even a rudimentary low yield one, is quite a feat of engineering. Fissile material for the core is but one component, albeit a very difficult one to acquire (from what I understand). Other bits; machinable billets of tungsten, complex fail-safe triggering mechanisms, primary ignition chemistry, and high explosives are all very very very difficult nuts to crack. From what I've read North Korea essentially exhausted it's entire supply of tungsten to produce the two semi-functional weapons which they tested recently; the chemistry of the high explosives used in the US's most early designed implosion fission bombs has never been declassified and is still considered a major feat of chemical engineering by those who've known enough about it to comment on it. The triggering mechanism used in our (US) ICBM arsenal is a micro-mechanical marvel with tolerances which could rival that of even the world's best watchmakers. Even with a detailed part by part schematic I think assembly of any sort of functional nuclear device would be well beyond the capabilities of most actors on the world stage. To claim otherwise would be tantamount to claiming that a blueprint for an F14 tomcat in the hands of a street gang would be a prelude to The bloods and the crips having an airforce... Having plans may be a necessary precursor to constructing a device, but it certainly does not imbue those in possession with the ability to actually make manifest the device described within the plans.

Re:Garage Nukes

[jacquesm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)

23 Kg small enough for you ? Maybe by 'taking out' you mean to level the whole thing but I think just exploding one of these from the top of a high building would be enough to destroy Manhattan in an economical sense.