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Program To Detect Smuggled Nuclear Bombs Stalls
Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a program to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers has stalled because the United States has run out of helium 3, a crucial raw material needed to build the 1,300 to 1,400 machines to be deployed in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year. Helium 3 is an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays — but the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989 after accumulating a substantial stockpile of Helium 3 as a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. 'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. Helium 3 is not hazardous or even chemically reactive, and it is not the only material that can be used for neutron detection. The Homeland Security Department has older equipment that can look for radioactivity, but it does not differentiate well between bomb fuel and innocuous materials that naturally emit radiation like cat litter, ceramic tiles and bananas — and sounds false alarms more often. In a letter to President Obama, Miller called the shortage 'a national crisis' and said the price had jumped to $2,000 a liter from $100 in the last few years. With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terrorists will try to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States, Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas."
Will they inspect all trucks entering the US from Canada and Mexico?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
International Committee on Future Accelerators Beam Dynamics section newsletter abstract under the URL.
While the emphasis in the six articles is on transmutation of nuclear waste and accelerator driven nuclear power plants, the same accelerators can generate neutrons to breed tritium from lithium. The fusion demonstration ITER will have blanket with lithium to demonstrate breeding since its fuel is a deuterium-tritium mixture.
It would be lovely for the US accelerator community if the US DHS forked over $1.5B for a system to breed tritium and, in its spare time, transmute long lived waste isotopes so used fuel rods would decay to radiation levels below that of natural uranium ore within one thousand instead of one hundred thousand years.
http://www-bd.fnal.gov/icfabd/Newsletter49.pdf
The theme is "Accelerator Driven Sub-Critical Assemblies (ADS) and its challenge to accelerators." This is a topic that could have a deep impact on the future of our society. As we all know, developing clean energy and protecting the environment are two top priorities in countries around the world. ADS is an accelerator-based technology that may provide a viable solution to these major problems. Jiuqing collected 6 excellent articles in the theme section. They give a comprehensive review of this important accelerator field, including valuable lessons learned from the past.
Apparently it is, if you're in the military and the "things" you are speaking out against are the United States and/or its armed forces. Uniform Code of Military Justice, article 134: "GENERAL ARTICLE: Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special , or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_article_(military_law)
Admittedly that's the final "catch all" article intended to close the loopholes above. Still, by the letter of the law...
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Personal speedboat goes out a couple miles. Bomb is loaded onboard. Boat comes back in and is towed to the final destination hitched to an SUV. Just in case, also put a few kilos of cocaine onboard. That way if the police find it they'll take it to the impound yard in a populated area.
Or just ship it in a commercial container and detonate the thing in the port of Los Angeles, it's not like it's remote.
I just finished working on this project a year ago. I worked as a sub-contractor for Thermo-Fisher Scientific, one of the prime contractors, to DNDO, DHS, and CBP. It was an interesting project. My team was responsible for developing the command and control software for these systems. Had a lot of ups and downs. The technology works fairly well. We did A LOT of testing of the system in both laboratory and field conditions in order to validate the software. Got to travel to great and wonderous places like Nevada Test Site, Southampton, UK, and Antwerp, Belgium. Who'd a thought something like this would put a monkey in the works?
Funny anecdote: When we installed the system in Southampton, UK, the British and Eurpoean Union representatives were most interest in if it could detect "Cigarettes"? Man, they wanna make sure they collect that tax on your smokes!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Alas, when you mix 3He with oxygen, it starts depolarizing, fast. We've got to mix it on the fly, right before it goes into the mouse. It's tricky, but we've gotten the hang of it. (Royal "we" here; I'm just a data plumber.)
It could be far far worse. These things could deployed in enough numbers to satisfy DHS, only to have a bomb still go off in the future.
Two things will happen. The US will be locked up tighter than East Germany. Second, we will find ourselves in vigilant warfare conducted by our own citizens and ex-members of the armed forces. No nation on earth will stop the chaotic violence and bloodshed that will soon follow.
Life is not for the lazy.