US Couple Arrested For Transmitting Nuclear Secrets In Sting Operation

DesScorp writes "Recalling the famous Rosenberg nuclear spy case of the '50s, the US Justice Department has arrested a couple working at a 'leading nuclear research facility' for giving nuclear secrets to Venezuela. Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni 'have been indicted on charges of communicating classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official and conspiring to participate in the development of an atomic weapon for Venezuela,' the department said in a statement. If convicted, the couple would receive life in prison."

Comments

FTFA

[Pojut]

75 and 67 years old? Jeebus.

Re:FTFA

[StikyPad]

I don't understand why people (continue to) try to sell government secrets. The risk of getting caught far outweighs the potential reward; especially if you can't spend any of it without drawing attention.

If you want to sell "secrets", join a bank.. nobody gives a shit about leaked customer information.

Re:FTFA

[Thiez]

At that age, 'life in prison' probably isn't much of a deterrent. The potential reward may well outweigh a decade of imprisonment.

Re:FTFA

[grantek]

At that age, 'life in prison' probably isn't much of a deterrent. The potential reward may well outweigh a decade of imprisonment.

especially if the reward isn't for you, and is for family members/loved ones

Re:FTFA

[Starteck81]

People risk their life for less of a potential reward every day. Think of the average solider or firefighter.

Re:FTFA

[anti-human 1]

Face it, it is time to leave the Science to the 120 year olds.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

They were probably stolen since the Manhattan Project and took some time to get them on the market.

Re:FTFA

[IB4Student]

To some people, saving a person's life is more important than getting some dirty money.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

75 and 67 years old?

Yeah, that's about the right age. 10 and 2 the day the Bomb was dropped on Japan in 1945. 17 and 9 the day the H-Bomb was tested in 1952. 24 and 16 the day the Russkies launched Sputnik in 1959. Perfect timing for a young adult or child to get inspired by the prospects of a career in science and engineering, and to subsequently find themselves in their 30s (or 20s) at a weapons lab building the World's Biggest Fireworks during the heyday of Cold War bomb design.

(What, you think NASA built all those rockets just to beat the Russians to the moon? Manned spaceflight, satellite phones, GPS, and Google Maps are all spinoffs from things that were fundamentally cold war-era military projects: a fleet of reliable ICBMs, communications systems, navigation and targeting systems, and spy satellites.)

The present-day stockpile stewardship has led to lots of interesting advances (with civilian applications) in supercomputing, solid state physics, and helped out with the monitoring/cleanup of old nuclear sites, but when it comes to practical applications, most of the folks are going to be old. (Any young adult growing up today - in the post-test-ban treaty era - that considers a career in this direction is aware they'll still be dealing with very interesting problems... but that the closest they'll ever get to knowing if it really works is in the form of analyzing the results from subcritical tests or from computer simulations.)

I don't have a need to know if there are many (or any) young nuclear weapons designers today, but I suspect that since we haven't fielded a new design in decades, that much of weapons design is rapidly approaching the "lost knowledge" stage, and the demographic is akin to that grizzled (but brilliant!) old guy who still knows how to fix a mechanical typewriter or tune a carburetor.

Much like the WW2 vets, the people of the Manhattan Project aren't going to be around much longer - and the second generation of weaponeers (who worked on the bombs that brought us the Cold War) is also getting pretty damn long in the tooth. Here's hoping the young'uns at the labs - even if they can never talk about the lost knowledge they've preserved - are at least taking steps to preserve the stories of the people who came before them. Because there are (and shouldn't be!) publicly-accessible papers on much of this research, it's even more vital that the labs who did the engineering (and who are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping it under wraps) to take steps to record, preserve, and secure the history for the next generation of engineers.

Fuck these two asshats for leaking secrets. But here's a pseudonymous note of civilian thanks to the vast majority of you old fogies who did keep true to your oaths. You did some damn fine engineering while keeping secret the things that needed to remain secret. We random civilian nerds will never (and given the state of the world, probably should never!) have a chance to fully appreciate just how good the engineering was, but from what you have been permitted to declassify so far... yeah, pretty damn good. You gave us a world in which Fallout 3 was a fun video game, not a reality TV show. Thanks!)

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Money is only "dirty" to the people on the other side of the fence.

Re:FTFA

[Pinky's Brain]

Well that was non sequitur.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

HISTORY FAIL! Sputnik was launched in 1957!

Re:FTFA

[Gordonjcp]

You did some damn fine engineering while keeping secret the things that needed to remain secret.

You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun. Those damn illegal Mexicans, for example, they shouldn't be allowed guns. Or those Muslims, no guns for them. So really what they want is for only the people they think are the right sort of people to be able to have guns.

Now, consider that a nuclear weapon is really just another kind of gun...

Re:FTFA

[Rogerborg]

They'll be better looked after in prison than on Social Security. No joke.

Re:FTFA

[StikyPad]

Au contraire: the time life you have left, the more valuable it becomes. That's 0 more birthdays, holidays, or weekends spent with the grandkids, and they with you. You didn't just gamble with your own future, but everyone who cares about you as well.

The thing that surprises me (though I guess it shouldn't, given the number of incidents) is that while I might expect someone working at McDonalds to be both stupid and desperate enough to try to do something like that, I would have hoped that someone working at a nuclear research facility with access to TS information would be neither stupid nor desperate.

And the irony is that knowing *how* to make a nuclear weapon isn't even a well kept secret.. AT ALL. Someone offering to pay lots of money for that information should have been a huge red flag, even absent any other moral, ethical, or practical concerns.

Re:FTFA

[an00bis]

They'll be better looked after in prison than on Social Security. No joke.

This is the truth, why was this marked as Troll?

Re:FTFA

[WillDraven]

Or if you're not doing it for the money, but for ideological reasons.

Re:FTFA

[pastyM]

Sadly you are right many gun rights people I know really thing the second amendment only apples to them and there friends. I feel we should ether ban every weapon ever made down to the rocks that can be thrown or ban nothing at all. Because what give anyone the right to say that "we can have something but you can't". Sorry for my little rant.

Re:FTFA

[cyn1c77]

You did some damn fine engineering while keeping secret the things that needed to remain secret.

You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun. Those damn illegal Mexicans, for example, they shouldn't be allowed guns. Or those Muslims, no guns for them. So really what they want is for only the people they think are the right sort of people to be able to have guns.

I believe the argument is that every US citizen who can qualify on a shooting range with a gun should be able to carry one. So non-US citizens would not meet that criteria.

Now, consider that a nuclear weapon is really just another kind of gun...

You fail completely with this statement. The method of operation is different. The energy release is orders of magnitude different. Ignoring the difference in energy magnitudes, a nuclear weapon is really just another kind of BOMB. Note that this is different than a gun. Is it legal for you to own a bomb in the US?

Re:FTFA

[vux984]

You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun.

Agreed. But its much more fundamental a problem than that. There are a lot of people in the US that think that:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

only applies to Americans.

Re:FTFA

[Runaway1956]

I presume you have citations for your little rant? I've never actually looked at a "permit". Is there a place that asks your race, religion, nationality, or anything of that sort? Or, can just ANYONE walk into a gun store, and fill out whatever paperwork the state requires, and walk out with a gun? In Arkansas, anyone at all can walk into the store and literally walk out ten minutes later, carrying their choice of rifle or shotgun. I haven't bought a handgun in years, I think there is a state mandated waiting period. Or maybe not. This isn't New York, or Washington D.C. after all. Assuming that our gun stores actually require paperwork, an ID, and a waiting period - do they even ASK about your religious and other affiliations? I don't think so. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Re:FTFA

[IndustrialComplex]

Is it legal for you to own a bomb in the US?

I don't know, let's find out. You can pass lots of laws that don't pass Constitutional muster.

But that's beside the point. If I have a nuclear bomb, just who is going to tell me no?

Re:FTFA

[Defenestrar]

And the irony is that knowing *how* to make a nuclear weapon isn't even a well kept secret.. AT ALL.

True in some senses. Most junior high kids interested in the physical sciences could describe a gun type or spherical type fission bomb. One might even get the concept of the implosion lens (make the shockwaves match up & stuff).

Knowing the general theory isn't exactly the same as: make a hemisphere of diameter X out of alloy Y, or: blend explosives A, B, C, D in the gradient {a, b, c, d}, or perhaps: the tritium concentration must be above n mass percent, or maybe: the neutron flux shall be Z or thou shalt surely fail in epic fashion.

We went through a lot of atolls worth of data to get the specifics of our top secret data. Depending on what's leaked you've eliminated a lot of obvious R&D (especially to the IAEA) and given somebody a highly advanced warhead (Firefox 3 vs Lynx 1).

Some people claim that the declassified or otherwise published data has not been altered and has pretty precise blueprints, but until someone verifies that through a DIY atol removal, I think there's a decent chance that at least some of the information has been cleverly and subtly altered before public release. Otherwise I'd have expected quite a few more nuclear powers given the easy information.

Re:FTFA

[cdrguru]

Guns? Well, there are clearly three sorts of people when it comes to guns: those that are frightened of them, those that know how and when to use them and those that are quite willing to use them anytime.

Nuclear weapons are a bit simpler. There are only two sorts of people when it comes to them: people that value this life and people that only value the afterlife. I'd say the folks that only value the afterlife are fucking dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to have anything more complicated than a safety razor.

The leaders in the USSR valued this life for themselves and their population too much to throw it away on the possibility of leading the world into a new era of socialist superiority. The leaders of Iran apparently value only the afterlife and likely consider killing someone as advancing them along the path to their reward. We have seen much evidence of this and nothing that contradicts this view.

The real question is how many people of the Muslim faith agree with that outlook. I don't care what they are praying about if they are afraid of losing their lives and the lives of their children. If they consider their lives better spent as martyrs and the lives of their children to be of no importance as long as they have a nice secure afterlife they are dangerous and unfit for the community of Man.

Oh, and Christians that only value the afterlife are equally as dangerous. It has nothing to do with the specific brand of religion, just the attitude towards the living and the attitude towards whatever possible afterlife you might believe in.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that there are people who can't tune a carburetor??

Hopeless pansies... won't last a week past the end days...

Re:FTFA

[Mr. Slippery]

The leaders of Iran apparently value only the afterlife and likely consider killing someone as advancing them along the path to their reward. We have seen much evidence of this...

Then surely you could present some?

If you don't care about this life, but only the afterlife, then national defense is not a concern. If, on the other hand, you are concerned about this life and defending your people, and one of the most aggressive nations in the world invades your neighbor, even if you hate that neighbor you have to start to wonder what you can do to prevent yourself from being similarly attacked

Ahmadinejad may be, in general, a nutcase, but Iran has very good and sane reasons to want to have a nuclear deterrent.

Re:FTFA

[McGiraf]

Money is not the only reward. They could be doing it for moral, political, nationalist, patriotic reasons, watever.

 

Re:FTFA

[caerwyn]

The problem is not that these people are *stupid*; rather, it's that they think they're smarter than they are. They convince themselves that they're smart enough not to get caught.

Also: knowing how to make a modern nuclear weapon is a lot harder, and a lot more of a secret, than you'd think. A dirty bomb of the sort we dropped on Hiroshima? No, not necessarily. A hydrogen bomb? That's an order of magnitude more difficult, and requires a huge amount of engineering effort to shape everything properly. There are a number of countries with nuclear capability, but that doesn't mean they all have equal nuclear proficiency, and the most modern stuff is an incredibly well-kept secret.

Re:FTFA

[sznupi]

People leaking such secrets might as well think that's exactly what they're doing, saving lifes (just on the "wrong" side) - wasn't there a thing how most "traitors" of such kind are motivated not by money?

Re:FTFA

[McGiraf]

The question is how many nation have used nuclear weapons so far to actually kill people?

And which are they?

Maybe those are the ones that should not be permitted to have any.

Re:FTFA

[sznupi]

Unless they see it on just slightly(*) grander scales - most generally, securing their valued group / etc. And close to the end of their own life anyway.

(*)Without checking, tell me in which year and city your great-grandmother from the side of your father & grandmother was born...
And that was just a blink of an eye ago, all things considered. We often don't think that much about our recent ancestors; likewise about future descendants.

Re:FTFA

[Artifakt]

You could wire it up to go off if your heart stops and drive around on a motorcycle with it in the sidecar. Just watch out for some pizza delivery dude named Hiro Protagonist.

Re:FTFA

[Firethorn]

Some people claim that the declassified or otherwise published data has not been altered and has pretty precise blueprints, but until someone verifies that through a DIY atol removal, I think there's a decent chance that at least some of the information has been cleverly and subtly altered before public release. Otherwise I'd have expected quite a few more nuclear powers given the easy information.

From everything I've heard, building a nuclear bomb isn't that hard. The hard part is getting the enriched uranium or plutonium.

Re:FTFA

[hairyfeet]

I'm not him, but I'll be happy to oblige. How about this? And I quote "In Iraq's most difficult times, thousands of children resorted in mine cleaning actions. They would pass through mine fields and die, activating the placed explosive devices. In that way, they cleared the path for Iranian armed forces. Before every mission, one Taiwan key was hanged on every child's neck, to open the door of Heaven."

I'm sorry, but anybody that sticks little plastic keys on a kid's neck, tells them it's the key to enter heaven, and then punts their little butts into a minefield? Sick bastards that I wouldn't trust with a pointed stick, much less the power of the bomb.

Re:FTFA

[Uplink64]

Every time a country doesn't want to follow our rules automatically becomes an enemy of the US, come on people we don't like other countries to tell us what to do but we love to tell others what to do. I'm surprise they did not mention Colombia or Costa Rica but not it has to be Venezuela this is sick I'm getting tired of the media wars again countries that don't want to get down and kiss our American feet. Our real war is inside our country (Unemployment, Drugs, Alcoholism, Immigration and more). We need that frigging money the government is spending in war now so we can at least fix the unemployment part.

Re:FTFA

[Teancum]

This is so true. Anybody with a general understanding of radioactive isotopes is likely going to be able to make something akin to the "Little Boy" or the "Fat Man" bombs that were used on Japan. In the realm of nuclear bombs, those were puny little things that were unbelievably heavy and inaccurate as well. It is sort of hard to miss a target the size of a city, so that wasn't a problem when they were used.

The trick, as you have pointed out, is to make the bombs small enough to be practical in terms of their delivery and to perhaps amplify the yield to give a genuinely powerful punch. Getting the size of a warhead to a manageable size is the key to much of the research, and to be able to know how to compress the fissionable metal sufficiently to initiate the chain reaction.

I've seen some magazines, notably an old issue of Analog, that even had a special supplement labeled "give this to your local terrorist" that went into depth about how to make nuclear weapons... at least some crude enough to get the job done. It also gave a rather detailed description of centrifuges necessary to get the material to a concentrated form from material found in a nuclear power plant... with a rather gruesome description of the medical problems nuclear materials workers need to be concerned about unless you have gobs of money necessary to build the proper facilities to get everything put together.

That is ultimately the largest problem with nuclear weapons: It needs the resources of a major nation-state in order to get one put together. You can trade real estate for cost.... which isn't too bad if you are a 3rd world dictator. Something like that sticks out like a sore thumb if it is done by a group trying to stay covert. Certainly no country is going to be unaware that nuclear bombs are being developed within that country, and it will never happen in a place like Somalia or Tuvalu.

Even once the bomb is built, unless that country is prepared to use the bomb immediately (with the massive consequences for doing that), the bombs become even more expensive in terms of basic security (making sure somebody other than the leaders of that country are not going to use those weapons) and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for simply hanging onto those weapons. Basically, there isn't a strong compelling reason to even have these weapons unless you are in a life or death struggle for national survival or are one of the top major economic and military powers in the world.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't have a need to know if there are many (or any) young nuclear weapons designers today,"

Because there isn't much need for new designs, much less to reinvent the wheel. The cast off ideas of the last generations are far more than all the potential truly new designs that may be discovered.

"Because there are (and shouldn't be!) publicly-accessible papers on much of this research"

Huh? I'm a biologist by training, and the mere concepts of how a bomb works without those papers is sufficient to get a good idea to build one, esp. a straight atomic bomb (fission only). Hell, shielding, isotope separation, and critical mass are enough to understand what's going on. The first two concepts, any equipment maker or designer knows them quite well and they are pervasive techniques in the biological, chemical, industrial, or medical fields, simply applied to physics (physics and chemistry experiments being the originator of them most likely). Critical mass isn't exactly a hard concept to understand either, and even if you didn't understand it, you could get to it crudely.

Getting the resources, that's another matter entirely. I think most /.ers with even a minor interest knows how to build an atomic bomb (fission only). Go to fusion, and probably most could figure it out, esp. if you've looked into aneutronic fusion, like I have.

Will is a separate issue too.

Plenty of people out there that could have the means to build a bomb, bu the no need or will and don't want the trouble.

Plenty of people out there with the will to build a bomb, that don't have the means.

The problem isn't the knowledge. The knowledge is already out there wholesale. In today's world, there are easier ways to get what you want WITHOUT a nuclear weapon than with.

Re:FTFA

[Decker-Mage]

Minor correction. The actual classification for that information is "Nuclear" not Top-Secret (TS) or even SAP/SAR (Special Access Program/Special Access Required). You can have a Nuclear clearance and have a much lower overall clearance, say Secret which covers things like encryption equipment, for instance.

Re:FTFA

[evilviper]

The risk of getting caught far outweighs the potential reward; especially if you can't spend any of it without drawing attention.

The best moles are the ones doing it for non-monetary reasons. For one, because they're much harder to catch. So why do it? Ego? Misplaced idealism? (Foreign) patriotism? Could be many more. People that sell secrets aren't doing it to accumulate a nest-egg.

Re:FTFA

[bmajik]

Well, I am one of the people who thinks that the government shouldn't put it self in the business of keeping people from having guns -- after all, it says so right in our constitution. Yes, that applies to crazy people and felons. Look -- they're going to get them anyway. 100% of the gun laws on the books are for harassing innocent people and for slowly disarming the population. No exceptions.

I am sure there are many anecdotes about some gun law doing some act of good somewhere. I don't doubt it for a second. But the price of a truly free society is that dim people sometimes run with scissors. You try and identify those people early and stay clear.

The difference between ensuring that moral individuals in a free society retain weapons with which to fight a government run amok, and the idea that all countries are equally entitled to nuclear weapons, is this:

The majority of the violence in world history is initiated by politicians for political reasons. So while I think it is important that anyone free to roam the streets of America be able to carry a gun while doing so, i don't extend that same courtesy to any asshole politician. Politicians, generally, become politicians so they can be evil under the full protection and cover of law. Normal folks inclined to evil generally show their colors long before we have to worry about them getting "the bomb".

Re:FTFA

[Decker-Mage]

And what, you think all those super-computers that have been engineered over the last few decades are for peaceful scientific research!? These days, rather than designing a new bomb and then testing it underground, they design it and then validate the design against their reference models which have been validated using earlier designs and the data those generated. Hell, I was validating nuclear designs against a microcomputer back in 1979. It was very avant-garde then (and damned slow!) but it worked. Now we use distributed, networked processing to get the crunching down to something manageable.

As for the rest? :P

Re:FTFA

[Teancum]

You must know some real nut jobs, or perhaps you don't really understand what it is that they really think about the 2nd amendment. The complaint is how government agents and police officers are very selective on their application of the constitution. When those people in positions of authority are being selective in following their oath of office, I would have to say that they are following no oath at all.

Of course a police officer would love to be the only armed individual when they come into a house. That is precisely the "we can have something but you can't" argument. It isn't a surprise that there are also a whole bunch of bullies in the law enforcement community too. Not everybody, but it does attract that kind of element, just as education tends to attract perverts who like to molest children.

Re:FTFA

[JWSmythe]

The risk of getting caught far outweighs the potential reward;

    There's a problem with your understanding of the crime. Us normal folks (those without DoD clearances, who'd never be offered millions for anything we know) only hear about the people who are caught.

    Think of it as smaller crimes. Have you ever known someone who was a drug dealer or user? You don't have to answer that. :) Sure, we see the news where drug dealers and users are arrested, killed, etc, etc, etc. What you don't necessarily know about is that for every name or face that shows up in the news, there are thousands of people involved with that industry. The reason for the publicity of such events isn't to slow down those who are actively doing it, it's to persuade people who may get into that line of work that it's horribly dangerous.

    By the sound of the story, they were framed. A retired couple, one who was laid off years ago. The other probably wasn't making great money. Between the two of them, they had sensitive information and knowledge. The FBI sting involved pretending to be a foreign national offering up almost 1 million dollars.

    If you were an old retired couple, barely making ends meet with your pension, doesn't a million dollars in cash sound like a nice way to live the rest of your life? As it appears, they didn't actively pursue such a sale. The FBI staged the whole international secrets crime.

    So, what comes of all of this? The couple may end up in prison for the rest of their lives. Other government workers will think twice about giving up any sort of information for any amount of cash. The smart ones (the ones who don't get caught) will still commit crimes such as this. The stupid ones (the ones who do get caught) will make headlines again when they work out a deal with the FBI to commit such a crime.

    All the FBI managed to do was bust a couple who probably wouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. We all have our price, it just matters how gullible you are, and how much it would cost to buy you off. Would I accept $1 million? Probably not. $1 billion and guaranteed protection in another country? I'd have to think about it.

    Sadly enough, we're arresting people now for actions that were encouraged of skilled people years before. The United States accumulated many great scientists and military experts. Surely many of them were bribed in one way or another. Much of that will never make it to the history books.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"The leaders in the USSR valued this life for themselves and their population too much to throw it away on the possibility of leading the world into a new era of socialist superiority. The leaders of Iran apparently value only the afterlife and likely consider killing someone as advancing them along the path to their reward. We have seen much evidence of this and nothing that contradicts this view."

Shut the fuck up, knucklehead. If Iran cared only about afterlife, they'd have blown themselves up long ago.

Re:FTFA

[shermo]

Woops, posting to undo moderation. Have an imaginary +1 interesting.

Re:FTFA

[Teancum]

The problem I have with some nations in the world isn't the bombs or weapons they are making, but what they are teaching their children. Those countries which raise their children in an environment where all those kids learn from the earliest age is hatred and bitterness toward a certain "enemy" is bound to eventually act upon that sort of training. It doesn't matter if the hatred is toward Americans, Blacks, Jews, Homosexuals, or whatever it might be, it is all bad and to me those schools are far and away more dangerous than any kind of bomb that could ever be made.

What disappoints me most is that many of those within the Muslim faith.... in countries where they are certainly free to speak their mind... are not condemning this kind of hatred but instead many are spreading it even further. I know there are at least some that do condemn this sort of visceral hatred toward certain ethnic groups, but those tend to be an exceptional minority. For radical Christian groups (such as the Irish Republican Army or the Ku Klux Klan), those extremist groups are the minority and are frequently condemned for their acts of violence. It is not something "mainstream" within Christian society. Wahhabism and other related philosophies are unfortunately mainstream in Muslim society.

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

Anybody with a general understanding of radioactive isotopes is likely going to be able to make something akin to the "Little Boy" or the "Fat Man" bombs that were used on Japan.

You wouldn't even need much knowledge about radioactive isotopes. If you can get your hands on fissionable material you can build a bomb. Getting your hands on the fissionable material is the hard part. The rest is just engineering.

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

MICE.

Money
Ideology
Coercion
Ego

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

You are rambling. Selling nuclear secrets is a crime. Period. It does not matter if you sell them to an enemy (Iran), a trading partner with a frosty relationship (Venezuela) or an ally (Israel).

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

Yes, that applies to crazy people and felons.

Actually, no it doesn't. From the 5th amendment:

No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

It's perfectly constitutional to take gun rights away from convicted felons. I would prefer that it be something the Judge has the power to do at sentencing and not automatic, but either way the felon received due process before losing his rights.

Regarding crazy people, you can't lose your gun rights unless you've been involuntarily committed, which presumably requires due process (otherwise you'd just file for a writ of habeas corpus)

Re:FTFA

[bmajik]

Why do felons retain the right of free speech, and the right to be free from quartering soldiers, but not the RKBA ?

I said what my preference is. The government can always "decide" that legally, it has certain powers that I don't think it should.

Re:FTFA

[bm_luethke]

It all depends on how you define "rewards", it is implied the spies were doing this for money and if that is the case you are absolutely wrong. Very few US soldiers (and most of the first world, I do not mean to imply British, Canadian, Australian, indeed most countries soldiers are different) and certainly the vast majority of the worlds fire fighters (is there *anyplace* that they get the power granted to oppressive Law Enforcement?) are not in it for money. As such the risks to their lives are on a totally different metric. Most would say their reward far outweighs the risk. Many spies will say so too - certainly given the wages many that work for the CIA, MI5, the old KGB, and a number of other intelligence (that is - spies) aren't rolling in money despite what the James Bond movies show. Most have a high likely hood of death or imprisonment with the parent government not doing much other than looking the other way if caught too.

The ones that go for money, well that is just plain stupid. It is *never* enough to cover the risk even if they could realistically spend it. Since these people aren't really to be trusted to begin with - after all they are obviously out for the highest bidder - they aren't going to be someone that you fight to bring home at all. They will be left to whatever the host country does to them. Further since their main value is in the information they will gather most countries hiring them will push well past what is safe - you wouldn't want to lose a truly dedicated spy but that person that has leaked everything they know for money: why wouldn't you push for more? No skin off your back if they get caught (who is shocked and angered that one country is spying on another) and you may get a real payoff. Even if not and they get caught - who is going to sue you if you do not deliver on the money?

Lets face it, the Rosenberg's were mentioned in the article and what did it buy them with respect to money? Absolutely squat for them and their family. All it did was make them live in infamy, the Russians weren't about to spend the resources to get them back after they bled them dry of information and why give their descendants money if they already got what they wanted? That is even if the US would have allowed it to happen. However as I understand they felt that giving the Russians the information was more important than the money and they may have very well died figuring they did the Right Thing (and that is a separate argument).

The only spies that make any sense are the same ones that make sense for police, firefighters, and soldier - it is a cause you believe in and serving that cause is the major influence. That doesn't mean many will not get lured in by money or that money isn't a factor. Money is always a factor, no matter if you take the most altruistic full time position on the planet you still have to eat, drink, and have shelter (which takes money). However is money is your *main* factor with being a spy you are an idiot and the country hiring you will only use you as much as it can - as said your countries local fire fighters die for less money, but that isn't what they do their job for.

Re:FTFA

[Keen Anthony]

It is true that law enforcement does attract people who have tended to be bullies, or at least authoritarian. But the parent was right, and one doesn't have to be a nut job to be selective about the 2nd Amendment. We all do things like that. We want all the rights for ourselves and our friends and none of the rights for those we dislike. We might speak in the abstract about equality, but our gut instincts still say things like convicted sex offenders shouldn't be allowed to carry guns, or mentally ill people with a long history of violence shouldn't be allowed to buy guns. Really, this has nothing to do with the Constitution or concern over authority. Why would I want to raise arms against my local police or government anyway? I know many cops, and none have had issue with gun ownership. I've found most of the myth that they do to be the rantings of anti-government types who fantasize a little too much about revolution in a country that, at its worst, is still better IMO than a lot of other places I could live.

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

Why do felons retain the right of free speech, and the right to be free from quartering soldiers, but not the RKBA ?

Because that's the public policy position that we've decided to go with as a nation. They don't just lose the RKBA -- most US States take away their right to vote as well.

Re:FTFA

[shutdown -p now]

I believe the argument is that every US citizen who can qualify on a shooting range with a gun should be able to carry one. So non-US citizens would not meet that criteria.

Curiously enough, not only some states let non-US citizens keep and bear arms (e.g. Washington - damn liberals!), but 2nd Amendment does not speak of "citizens", but of "people", so its applicability - unless you're of the school of thought which believes that it is restricted to "well-regulated militia" only - is universal in US jurisdiction.

Re:FTFA

[bmajik]

The right to vote isn't in the bill of rights; it isn't specially marked as a pre-existing right of individuals so critical that the government _must not_ infringe it.

RKBA is precisely that. Yet the feds and the states have _regularly_ infringed it with impunity.

It's inclusion in the BOR is why i compared it to free speech and soldier quartering, not voting, or retaining a security clearance, or getting certain government jobs.

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

Did you not bother to read the section of the 5th amendment that I quoted? It's not infringement to take rights away from convicted felons. I agree with you that the feds and states have infringed on the RKBA in a variety of ways but the felon weapons ban is not one of them.

Re:FTFA

[Sir_Lewk]

By the sound of the story, they were framed.

I think you mean "entrapped" (although I'm not sure that is true either, who initiated this transaction?). "Framed" indicates that somebody else committed the crime, and managed to have the blame fall on these people.

Re:FTFA

[Sean Hederman]

I can think of a compelling reason:

America has started about 14 wars of aggression, and vastly many more military strikes, against non-nuclear nations since World War II, and none against nuclear ones.

Re:FTFA

[Type44Q]

Any young adult growing up today - in the post-test-ban treaty era - that considers a career in this direction is aware they'll still be dealing with very interesting problems... but that the closest they'll ever get to knowing if it really works is in the form of analyzing the results from subcritical tests or from computer simulations.

Or so we hope (most of us, anyway)! :P

Re:FTFA

[georgewilliamherbert]

Not for nuclear weapon design information. That's "Restricted Data", see DOE classification rules. Accessed with a DOD TS-CNWDI (Top Secret - Critical Nuclear Wepon Design Information) or DOE Q-clearance plus appropriate Sigma compartment clearances for the specifics you're looking at.

Re:FTFA

[Vegemeister]

Why shouldn't convicted sex offenders be able to own guns? Violent offenders, sure, but there are quite a few 'sex offenses' that aren't indicative of a proclivity toward violence. Should shoplifters be allowed to own guns? What about software pirates?

Re:FTFA

[georgewilliamherbert]

The Wikipedia article is intentionally not useful for designing anything.

However, we do have an online textbook (at roughly upper-division engineering/physics college student difficulty level) on the subject:
    http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html

In terms of what's been published online -

* There's a book with precise dimensional drawings and measurements on the Little Boy type Uranium gun type bomb. Not online, but purchasable at Amazon. It's not "a blueprint" but any competent draftsman / mechanical engineer could produce blueprints to build from, given the book.

* The dimensions and materials of all the layers of the Fat Man / Mark 1 type nuclear weapons are published in numerous sources. The precise shape of the lens in the outer layer has not been, though a rough back-of-the-envelope version of the equation for the lens shape is published. A precise and buildable lens shape would require someone with a fair talent in explosives engineering and shockwave engineering, especially someone aware of what the published equation left out, but the Fat Man design is fundamentally so brick-solid-simple that one could get the lens fairly imprecise and still have a functional weapon.

Some effort has gone into not actively publishing newer weapon design details in public. But that's not nearly the same as "they're not out". A number of more modern weapons are understood to at least close to the level Fat Man and Little Boy are. There are accurate internal component photos declassified for some weapons and parts. There are detailed hands-on descriptions of some parts, by people who worked on them. Check out the Wikipedia article on the B61 bomb, for example; the fission and fusion components were shown in a declassified film (but not the explosives to compress the fission parts).

Re:FTFA

[Vegemeister]

This post should not be modded troll, and I'm out of mod points. Someone please fix it.

Re:FTFA

[Keen Anthony]

Yes, I should have been more articulate. Violent sex offenders (rapists, etc), but also child molesters who may not be violent. In general, violent criminals should. And yes, shoplifters and pirates should not be allowed to own guns, but only if their original crime involves guns. There are jurisdictions which will up a crime's severity by the mere presence of a gun even when unused. If a shoplifter had a gun at the time, why not at least restrict gun ownership by a period of time? We take away licenses to drive from people who are frequently arrested for DUIs. But you get what I'm saying, violent criminals should not be allowed to have weapons.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it legal for you to own a bomb in the US?

According to the constitution, it probably should be. The constitution says "arms" - it doesn't specify whether they're guns or bombs. And, to the extent that the purpose of that clause was to protect the people from a tyrannical government, bombs are more important than guns - we've seen their relative effectiveness in the hands of a resistance force against a modern army in Iraq.

Re:FTFA

[shentino]

The constitution these days isn't worth the paper it's written on.

All that matters is:

1. What SCOTUS says it means
2. How many cases SCOTUS actually has time to review (they reject certiorari for a lot of them).
3. How many cases actually survive the legal grind long enough to get there to begin with.

If SCOTUS screws up, doesn't have the time to handle your case, or you never make it there, you're screwed.

Re:FTFA

[shentino]

If Iran cared only about the afterlife they may still kill a few "infidels" to earn a ticket to heaven.

Those "72 virgins" aren't free, you know.

Re:FTFA

[mehrotra.akash]

$1 billion and guaranteed protection in another country? I'd have to think about it.

You would still have to think???

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail beyond completely for incorrectly stating someone failed completely.

The method of operation is not different. You aim, fire, and kill. Amount of "energy release" is irrelevant. Your arguments are the same the lead to laws banning "assault weapons" and certain magazine sizes. There are practical reasons for not allowing ownership of nuclear missiles while allowing ownership of handguns. That does not mean a missile/launcher is not a "kind of gun". Except for you people who think you know everything and all answers are black and white.

Re:FTFA

[Jackal912]

And yet the methods of making nuclear bomb was leaked to everyone in practically no time at all. Relying on loyalty to America and a military oath as the main method of keeping a doomsday weapon's specifics secret obviously didn't work very well. IMHO the less people who can look up the precise details of making the absolute best nuclear bombs, the better - a secret shared is no secret at all, oath or no. Hell, it's too bad that the secret's already out, the best possible thing that could have happened is no one knowing how to make one any more. Now we need them for a deterrent at best or mutually assured destruction at worst.

Re:FTFA

[FuckingNickName]

The problem is that American culture is so egotistical that we're even having the debate. Some people simply believe that giving away US nuclear secrets is the moral thing to do (e.g. to maintain the global balance of power), and value doing the right thing over living a risk-free existence.

Re:FTFA

[FuckingNickName]

WIKIPEDIA.

What
I
Know
Is
Probably
Erroneous.
Detail
It
Anyway.

Re:FTFA

[zuriel7]

No new designs in the field? Ever heard of 'clean' nuclear weapons (minimal fissile yield, sizable fusion presentation)? Tactical nulear devices (tac-nukes, able to be fielded/deployed by a single unit)? Gamma burst nukes (leave structures standing, kill all biological life)? Plasma window low-yield weapons (a variant of nuclear weapons which create a high-energy plasma field around the blast to contain the effects of fallout similar to a forcefield)? Yeah. We've got new stuff. We can just thank God and some sensible CIC & JCOS that these have not been used in actual operations. Horrible in aftermath, weapons with an incredible standoff reach, and just about the only deterrent technologically advanced countries have left that is legally permissible (re: the ban on bioweaps, etc). I guess we can be glad that these weapons are not available in general circles as well. These aren't terrorist strap-yourself-with-one weapons. These are WMDs, and you don't blow up a building with them, you extinguish millions of human lives at once and making life hell for another few mililon. Read a copy of "Hiroshima" The written accounts of the survivors of the bomb... if you can find a copy, because it's rare, it's gripping and horrifyingly detailed. The true power of a nuclear weapon is not so much death and destruction, but rather the pain, suffering, and almost otherworldly tableau that it uses as a palette to transform the lives of all of its survivors. Also: read "The Fourth Protocol".

Re:FTFA

[misexistentialist]

You're describing the problem of selfishness, which is not unique to America.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

FuckingNickName:

Fight
Until
Cheerleaders
Know
I'm
No
Good.
Nevertheless,
I
Can
Kick
Nobody's
Ass,
Mine
Excepted

Re:FTFA

[ultranova]

This is the truth, why was this marked as Troll?

Because it contradicts the "welfare queens and retirees suck up our tax money" meme, and might even imply that the amount paid by Social Security is insufficient.

Re:FTFA

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you can get your hands on fissionable material you can build a bomb. Getting your hands on the fissionable material is the hard part. The rest is just engineering.

Fortunately, no. Or else Iran would have had a bomb 20 years ago. Heh perhaps the shah would have used one on the paedophile khomeini. There are many known locations where you can pick fissionable material off off the ground. One of those is even in Iran.

The problem is that for a neutron cascade ("the bomb"), you don't need fissionable material. What happens in a nuclear bomb starts with one nucleus falling apart. This produces 2 fast neutrons. IF both of those neutrons hit the correct fissionable material, it will cause 2 nuclei to split, producing 4 neutrons. Then 8. Then ... we all know where this is going.

So far so good. There is one problem, though. If you're the size of a neutron, hitting your neighbor nucleus is like attempting to hit the moon, if it were in the andromeda galaxy. It's just not going to happen. Of course there are many neighbor nuclei, increasing your chances. But if the neutrons hit non-U235 nuclei, nothing will happen.

So in a bomb you must make sure that there are enough U235 nuclei in the vicinity. That translates to concentration. How much concentration ? 98% pure at least, preferably more (if you want to be sure it blows up).

Easy enough, let's separate them. Unfortunately, U235 is never found alone, but generally in ore form (bonded to oxygen, for example). You need the pure metal U235. Furthermore it's at least 5% U238 and smaller concentrations of various isotopes. So you got to separate these things out. This is easy enough until you get to having only uranium nuclei, of various weights.

You need to appreciate just how similar U235 and U238 (for example) are. They are nuclei with the exact same magnetic field. Same magnetic moment. They react to the same light frequencies. Everything is the same, except the weight, but that isn't all that different either. U235 and U238 differ about 1.2% in weight. The only known way to separate them is to vaporize them into a highly positively charged plasma, then throw that plasma into a strong magnetic field, where the flow will start to rotate around the center of the field. This will create a minute difference in isotope concentration : less than 0.1% more U235 in the center, slightly over 0.2% more on the other side (the problem is thermalization, constantly remixing the isotopes). That's what's happening in those big tubes the US dislikes so much. Then the purified output of centrifuge 1 can go into centrifuge 2, restarting the process, slowly increasing the purity of the isotopes. You need to connect about 3000 in series.

It is not known exactly how efficient this process is. But it is known that about 200 kg of ore (5% uranium) is needed to create 1 kg 95% U235 (which is what the first nuclear power plants ran on). Undoubtedly it's at least 10 times that for 98%, but ... (the "losses" of this process are the fuel for it. You use the less pure output to fire a nuclear reactor to power the whole purification system, which eats a LOT of power).

Fissionable uranium, explosion-grade, is not easy to get. Not even if you're sitting on tons upon tons of fissionable material.

And quite frankly : thank God this is so.

Re:FTFA

[nacturation]

You could wire it up to go off if your heart stops and drive around on a motorcycle with it in the sidecar. Just watch out for some pizza delivery dude named Hiro Protagonist.

Man, what a trashy book that was. Fun read, but trashy. It would have redeemed itself a little had he put in a modicum of effort in choosing a name for the protagonist. I'm surprised the bad guy wasn't called "Villin Antagonist".

Re:FTFA

[supercrisp]

Because they're not motivated by money? The Rosenbergs weren't. Some spies are motivated because they approve of the regime for which they are attempting to spy. Sometimes people do stuff like this for the science.... After all, it's worth considering all the motivations of the people working in the Manhattan Project. In this case, if you read the article, you'll see the guy was wanting someone to support his research. Anyway my point is: not everything is about money. (For good or bad.)

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

A fun trashy book. But the character was not actually called Hiro Protagonist. That was his nick name.

Re:FTFA

[JamesP]

Yeah, but you don't need to be a genius to bang two pieces of plutonium together to attain critical mass

True, it may 'fizz', but for paranois morons like Hugo Chavez that's enough.

Re:FTFA

[Suki I]

Part of what they were proposing, according to the court documents, was an EMP device, which does not even need to be nuclear. They also had a grand plan for the future with a reactor hiding an enrichment facility and research to be done in universities. The Albuquerque paper has lots more details.

Re:FTFA

[Suki I]

What is being reported in this case is that he was billing at $2,000/hr. and had submitted a bill for almost $800,000 but the FBI had only paid him $20,000. The released court documents also allege he said DOE was his enemy. He was a disgruntled, laid off scientist whose pet project was not given enough money.

Re:FTFA

[Antisyzygy]

I don't understand how someone would even want to sell nuclear secrets to a government like Venezuela. Nuclear weapons are not cool. The development since the Manhattan project made the payload reach 25 megatons in the US and 50 in the former Soviet Union. Considering that Fat Man yielded about 21 kilotons and leveled Nagasaki, this is quite scary. Not to mention there is such a thing as a "salted bomb" which has fallout that is designed to have a high half-life. If I remember correctly, in the case of a cobalt "salted" bomb it could make an area uninhabitable for a period of 60 years. These people literally gave a technology that could potentially wipe out non-microbial life on this planet to people who actively hate us. Through their own greed and selfishness, they literally made the entire world much worse for their children or other peoples children. I would say they deserve worse than life in prison. It only takes 1 religious zealot or 1 over-confident military person or 1 selfish politician to get control over one of these devices before the potential outcome becomes worse than anything this planet has ever seen. And I say that simply because the nuclear technology since Hiroshima/Nagasaki has progressed to the point of absurd levels of destruction.

Re:FTFA

[Antisyzygy]

At that age, 'life in prison' probably isn't much of a deterrent. The potential reward may well outweigh a decade of imprisonment.

especially if the reward isn't for you, and is for family members/loved ones

Yes. Let me sell nuclear secrets to a government who could potentially use them against the country my family members/ loved ones live in so that they can get some money. Hell, at least they will be happy before any potential event.

Re:FTFA

[JWSmythe]

I consider every option. Only a fool looks at the bottom line and says "yes", without understanding everything that is involved. Would it be better to accept the money and hide in their country, or accept the money and be placed in the WITSEC, where I could live happily for the rest of my life? The options for any scenario are not limited to just the options presented to you.

Re:FTFA

[FuckingNickName]

Cult
Of
Wikipedia
Acronyms
Rated
D-

Re:FTFA

[spitzak]

Yes. Let me sell nuclear secrets to a government who could potentially use them against the country my family members/ loved ones live in so that they can get some money.

If they did this for ideological reasons, it is likely that they don't think the bomb will be used. They may think that Chavez threatening to use it on Columbia or whatever will help in negotiations. Or even more likely they may believe that "having the bomb" would just provide prestige for him.

I myself would think this is stupid. The actual results would be immediate sanctions, embargos, and threats to bomb the refinement facilities. If Chavez actually used a bomb he would be invaded and would be remembered forever as one of the greatest villians in world history.

I find it hard to believe that nuclear engineers would not figure this out, no matter how left-wing they might be. Therefore I think a more likely explanation is that they thought the * Venezuelans* were stupid and that they could extract a quick pile of money from them!

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

only applies to Americans.

This is from the declaration of independence. It is not a legally binding document like the US Constitution. This is the most mis-quoted line in American history. Nowhere in the Bill of Rights or Constitution does it say that we are guaranteed these rights.

Re:FTFA

[dave420]

Paranoid? The US has a history of fucking over governments they don't agree with in that area. I'd say his fears were justified.

Re:FTFA

[modecx]

And that leads me to a philosophical question...

A prison term ostensibly is issued for three reasons: punishment, rehabilitation, and to serve as a deterrent against potential criminal action for everyone else. Here in the US, punishment is usually the focus of imprisonment, and as a result we tend to have longer terms. In Europe, the focus is less on hard time, and much more on rehabilitation.

That being the case, why do we release felons if we don't feel they're rehabilitated enough to vote? I mean, keeping guns out of the hands of people who have committed violent offenses in the past is a grand idea and all. Rehabilitation or not they do have a better chance of doing their evil again. But voting? Come on.

Then there's the federal statute which dictates a felony (paraphrasing) as a crime with a potential punishment over one year... Even if you don't receive that much time during sentencing, the mere fact that you could have makes you a felon in the eyes of the law. An acquaintance of mine recently went through this for DUI. Our state recently adopted a three strikes policy for DUIs. Third strike guarantees at least a year in prison, and he got his third DUI two weeks after the law went into effect.

I'm not going to say that he didn't do a stupid thing (three times over)... To lose many of ones liberties over non-violent offenses? I don't think it's right. Of course, he had a modest gun collection, and he basically had to give it to his friends.

Re:FTFA

[Tweenk]

So in a bomb you must make sure that there are enough U235 nuclei in the vicinity. That translates to concentration. How much concentration ? 98% pure at least, preferably more (if you want to be sure it blows up).

Little Boy used roughly 90% enriched uranium.
In general, the required isotopic purity is closer to 90% than to 98%.

The only known way to separate them is to vaporize them into a highly positively charged plasma, then throw that plasma into a strong magnetic field, where the flow will start to rotate around the center of the field. This will create a minute difference in isotope concentration : less than 0.1% more U235 in the center, slightly over 0.2% more on the other side (the problem is thermalization, constantly remixing the isotopes). That's what's happening in those big tubes the US dislikes so much.

Centrifuge enrichment does not happen in plasma. It uses uranium hexafluoride, which sublimates above 93*C. It is a regular gas like carbon dioxide or oxygen, only heavier.

There's also an obsolete thermal diffusion process, but it takes roughly 100x more energy (!). The last thermal diffusion facility in Europe, Eurodif, will free up some 3000 MW of power when closed. Its job will be done by a new centrifuge enrichment plant that takes only 50 MW.

It is not known exactly how efficient this process is. But it is known that about 200 kg of ore (5% uranium) is needed to create 1 kg 95% U235 (which is what the first nuclear power plants ran on). Undoubtedly it's at least 10 times that for 98%, but ... (the "losses" of this process are the fuel for it. You use the less pure output to fire a nuclear reactor to power the whole purification system, which eats a LOT of power).

Your numbers are far off. U-235 makes up only 0.7% of natural uranium, the rest is U-238 which is not fissile. Furthermore most uranium ores are far less concentrated than 5%. Common ore grades are in the 2000-500 ppm range, or 0.2%-0.05%. To get 1kg of 90% U-235, you need roughly 100 tons of 2000 ppm ore and 167 kg of pure natural uranium (assuming that the tailings contain 0.16% U-235, which is very low but possible; actual tailing concentration is 0.25%-0.3%)

Fissionable uranium, explosion-grade, is not easy to get. Not even if you're sitting on tons upon tons of fissionable material.

That is true, but has little relevance for modern nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapon states except Pakistan use plutonium weapons, which are less costly and much smaller than high enriched uranium weapons. Plutonium can be produced from natural or low enriched uranium in specially designed reactors, then separated chemically. Some plutonium is produced in LWR reactors, but can't be used in nuclear weapons due to its isotopic composition: weapons plutonium needs 90-93% Pu-239, whereas LWR spent fuel contains ~60%.

Re:FTFA

[dave420]

That's your evidence? Awesome rigour there, sparky.

Re:FTFA

[dave420]

A bunch of mindless generalisations and guesswork. Your true colours are showing, asshat. Muslims around the world regularly condemn violence, and do everything they can to stop it. Scholars have risked their lives to produce massively condemning publications and spread them throughout the world. But I guess that didn't end up on Fox, so you don't know about it.

What disappoints me is that assholes like you can think they're so right, and the facts that destroy your argument are well-known around the world, yet your arrogance somehow enables you to know you are right, regardless of evidence.

You also missed "Muslims" in that list of groups that people are raised to hate, and there's a lot of that going on in the US. Loads.

Re:FTFA

[canadian_right]

I hope you are not an American, as your ignorance about your own constitution is amazing.

The American constitution does not give you any rights. The American constitution points out that you are born with rights, simply by being human, then sets out some specific things the government may NOT do as they would infringe your rights.

The USA constitution does NOT give you rights. It protects your rights from your government.

Re:FTFA

[hairyfeet]

Well there are about 4.6 MILLION hits for "Iran children suicide bombers" so knock yourself out "sparky" but pretending that Islam is the same as Christianity or Judaism, which BTW I'm an atheist so I'm not for or against ANY religion, is a fools belief that can cause the destruction of the West. Just ask those in Germany, Denmark, and France, how well the Muslims play with others? Or look up on Youtube "Muslims block streets Paris" to see that the Muslims there don't even bother to follow the rule of law and stage mass sit ins anytime without even a permit and the police are afraid of them.

Re:FTFA

[dave420]

Remember that the US has invaded two of Iran's neighbours. A more apt analogy for Americans would be if Russia invaded Canada and Mexico. I'm pretty sure then they'd demand to have a bomb to protect themselves. No one with nukes gets invaded, and these people being threatened know it.

Re:FTFA

[indi0144]

I'm Colombian, and why would we want a nuclear bomb? our enemy is in the jungle so our priority is helicopters and jungle commandos which are the best of the world thanks to 50 years of infamous continuous war now very close to an end, not thanks to the shitload of cocaine money that pour on those fuckers thanks to You fellow dopehead.

I even find it funny for Chavez to have a nuclear bomb, he knows the moment USA finds out he will get a GPS guided bomb in his ass. AFAIK Brazil and Argentina have modest nuclear programs, countries that OHMYFUCKINGGOAWD have been in the hands of socialist governments last years, yet I don't hear any American media outlets complaining that evil Brazilian cleptosicialisturrurist attacking teh freedom (tm)

For a sting operation the customer being Venezuela was correct. IRL Venezuela have long commercial and military agreements with Russia, Russia can sell them 1 of 2 nukes for the lulz, buy today, use tomorrow pay in 6 months. I think Iran could do the same thing: buy the nukes and be done with it, but then how is USA going to whine about it? because, you know, America of lately don't bitch a lot to other big superpowers like China or Russia.

Of course this can be the start of the next security theater, you know, big defense megacorps HATE being without a punchbag to test their shit and make money.

Re:FTFA

[nacturation]

A fun trashy book. But the character was not actually called Hiro Protagonist. That was his nick name.

As it's been more than a decade since I read it, I'll take your word on that one especially since I have zero interest in spending energy to find out what his actual name was.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be better looked after in prison than on Social Security. No joke.

True... there's no way social security would have paid for all the prostate exams he'll be receiving.

Re:FTFA

[IB4Student]

I was actually talking more about being a firefighter, but, yeah.

Re:FTFA

[Shakrai]

That being the case, why do we release felons if we don't feel they're rehabilitated enough to vote?

Because if you've chosen not to abide by the rules of society, why should you have a say in the running of said society?

I'm not going to say that he didn't do a stupid thing (three times over)... To lose many of ones liberties over non-violent offenses? I don't think it's right.

Your friend had three bites at the apple. It's sheer dumb luck that he didn't kill himself or someone else. I have no sympathy for him.

Re:FTFA

[notknown86]

Selective application is to be expected, when the man who primarily wrote that kept black slaves.

Re:FTFA

[c6gunner]

America has started about 14 wars of aggression ...

As opposed to all those peaceful wars, where soldiers smoke a lot of pot, prance through the streets, and hand out flowers to the other side.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason America hasn't gone to war against a nuclear power is because they were smart enough to back down when America's back was against the wall and there was a compelling reason to start the war.

I can name at least 5 periods of time when full scale nuclear war was a very real possibility... above and beyond silly things like a meteor strike or computer glitches that nearly caused some wars too. The most recent was Sept. 11th, 2001, when George W. Bush basically laid it on the line with Pakistan and asked the question: "Are you with us or against us?" Pakistan decided to cooperate. The Cuban missile crisis was also a real touch and go that nearly resulted in full scale nuclear war, as did the Yom Kippur War. Global nuclear war has been something we've avoided due to some very wise people in the right places that have made sure that it never happened.

It also wasn't like America was staying out of war prior to World War II either. I don't think much more than 10 years have ever been "at peace" in the entire history of America going back to about 1700. Some of those America started and others they were dragged into kicking and screaming. America has been at war against the UK twice and even an undeclared war against France after the American Revolution. A major war against Canada was resolved and averted at the last minute by some very skillful diplomacy. So what is your point here?

You are saying that a country should arm itself with nuclear weapons in hopes that America will leave them alone? Good luck with that one. You would be better off simply declaring war against America, putting up a fight after a fashion, and then surrendering once you get a response.

Re:FTFA

[General Wesc]

The USA constitution does NOT give you rights. It protects your rights from your government.

It gives you legal rights in recognizing moral rights.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the other poster, but I see his point. Consider the reaction of Christians around the world to Piss Christ. Contrast that with the reaction of Muslims around the world to the Danish cartoon of Muhammad wearing a bomb-turban. Yes, those events were roughly two decades apart, but even if Piss Christ were new today, the overall Christian reaction wouldn't be all that different than it was so many years ago, and it would still be markedly different from the Muslim reaction to the cartoon.

At this time in world history, a larger portion of the Muslim populations is reactionary compared to the Christian populations, and with a greater potential for violence. For a variety of reasons, many of which are unrelated to US policies, there's a great deal of frustration in the Muslim world, and it is easily used to effect by those in charge there.

And FWIW, I don't see many Christians around me actively criticizing Pat Robertson when one of his classic blunders makes it into the national media. At most, they're dismissive. For example, they weren't petitioning their church leaders and members to openly chastise Mr. Robertson for suggesting the US should assassinate Chavez. Robertson's gaffes make all Christians look bad, but they don't care enough to openly rebuff him in meaningfully large groups. Are there Christians who do denounce such inanity? Sure. Danforth and Carter come to mind as obvious examples, and I know there must be others. But those willing to stand up against their own are in the minority. From what I can see, the same is true in the Muslim world, but there is greater volatility there.

- T

for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[circletimessquare]

the more nukes around the more chance for something bad to happen

yes, that the usa has nukes, but venezuela doesn't can be seen as hypocritical if you want

so, if you honestly believe the world is a better place with equanimity, you should be working very hard for the usa to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. and you should be happy venezuela was denied, and not in any way do you think the world is a better place if both countries have nukes

right? right?

(rolls eyes)

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently your nick is highly appropriate

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[compro01]

nuclear secrets really aren't. The nth country experiment showed that over 40 years ago. Trying to keep the knowledge locked away is futile, the only hope is to control the fissile material.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[GradiusCVK]

...what?

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[chill]

The devil is in the details. While the basics of making a uranium bomb are fairly common knowledge, the nitty, gritty details of making a proper plutonium bomb are well kept secrets. Get it wrong, and things don't really work. Or it blows up in your face, taking a small city with it. It is very complex and requires some very precise manufacturing capabilities that are beyond the abilities of most countries in the world to get right.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Ethanol-fueled]

It wouldn't be nearly as bad if it were, say, Canada or Brazil.

Venezuela is known for it's anti-American leader Hugo Chavez, who loves to troll us. From what I hear, though, his people are sick of his bullshit.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Threni]

> Or it blows up in your face, taking a small city with it.

So make it in the city you want to blow up.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[chill]

Thus killing 2,423,158 birds with one stone? Hmmm...

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Cyberax]

I believe, that a crude but working plutonium implosion weapon can be fairly easy modeled even on a fairly modest supercomputer.

Precision manufacturing? Yes, but it's also much more accessible now (think laser cutting).

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[marcobat]

2,423,158 umh? according to wikipedia you are not thinking of any city in the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[PinkyGigglebrain]

I'm surprised that more countries don't have Uranium based devices. Even a low yield Uranium device is enough to destroy a city, kill 10s of thousands of civilians (direct blast or contamination) and use as a stick to bully your neighbors.

And as you point out its much easier to build a Uranium device than a Plutonium device, yet most countries put such effort into the latter. Yes I know, higher yield, smaller size but still ...

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Lakitu]

Who cares how futile it is, if you can delay potential nuclear armageddon for a century or two?

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[ChrisK87]

The theory behind making a working fission bomb was considered straightforward back in the late 30's. It's no accident we had a working nuke a decade after learning the structure of the atom and the nature of radiation. The only reason we beat Britain, France, Germany, and the USSR to the first nuclear weapon is because everyone else was putting their entire economy into winning WWII. More important than the design of a nuke, as Chill mentions, is the manufacturing process (and hiding it from the IAEA). Also, effective delivery devices are fairly well controlled. There's a big difference between a medium range ballistic missile MIRVs/SLBMs. I've read that it is uncertain whether Pakistan has small enough nukes and delivery systems to have significant second strike capability, which has some serious implications for stability in the region.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Alex Belits]

From what you heard, everyone in the world loves Americans.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[el3mentary]

Well some of Chicago might survive

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

While the basics of making a uranium bomb are fairly common knowledge, the nitty, gritty details of making a proper plutonium bomb are well kept secrets.

That depends on what you mean by "proper". There are a lot of clever ideas (like great-stuff expanding foam or the Peltier trick) that most people don't know about for getting smaller devices or unique configurations, but none of those are really necessary for a basic plutonium device. Granted, the device would be very bulky and crude compared to the best modern devices, but making a plutonium gadget is almost trivial; and you don't even need the complex timing requirements if you go with a two point ovoid design (not that I would recommend that, since they're very inefficient and it would be a terrible waste of perfectly good plutonium).

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Mashiki]

It wouldn't be nearly as bad if it were, say, Canada or Brazil.

Canada is already a nuclear power, we just don't have nuclear weapons. But we could build them in a very short time frame, as we have the infrastructure to do so.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Defenestrar]

No - the accidental triggering is not going to be that sort of critical (you may get criticality depending on the design, but it'll be the sideways fizzle kind that leave a nasty mess, but not vaporization of the small city). Mostly it doesn't work and makes pollution. If you are that bad at designing the initiation sequence for your explosives you're probably going to design yourself into oblivion with a poor road system before you even get that far.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Defenestrar]

He said birds. I think that's only about a tenth of the number of pigeons currently residing in Trafalgar Square, so surely we've got a few candidates for that over on this side of the pond.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[cdrguru]

Do you really understand how big a critical mass uranium bomb is? It is easy to make and the concepts have been pretty much disclosed and well tested. Should be easy, if you could get the uranium.

But you are looking at something that weighs 5,000 pounds at least. The Hiroshima bomb weighed more like 10,000 pounds. And this wasn't fancy instrumentation to see how well it worked. Just about all of the real creative work done since 1945 has focused on smaller, lighter subcritical mass weapons.

Yes, if someone wanted to wipe out New York City all it would take would be a 10,000 pound bomb in a ship. But most other delivery options are off the table. How many aircraft today can lift a 10,000 pound bomb?

I'd say this is the principal reason we don't have a nuclear arms club that includes every country. What would you do with such a thing if you had it? That and the fact that the amount of uranium required is quite a bit. Easy to get enough for a subcritical mass weapon, but hard to know what to do with it once you have it.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[sznupi]

But it isn't bad at all, the whole situation is a fiction created to lure in potential "traitors" - Venezuela is not involved at all (TFS describes it decently clear, and TFA completelly)

Though, I imagine, it's convenient to spread the news that way... (instead of "...trying to sell to a foreign state", which would suffice)
Now 50+% of Americans might start to think that Venezuela wants to build the bomb (basically stolen from superior us, on top of that)

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[sznupi]

Maybe not that many countries actually want those things / are a bit different than your (almost) portrayal...

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[goodmanj]

Wow, I think that's the most threatening thing I've ever heard a Canadian say.

So basically, what you're telling us is,
IT REQVIRES ONLY ZE VILL TO DO IT!

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[jandrese]

That really doesn't help unless you can build them in the time it takes an ICBM to fly over the pole.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Mashiki]

The reality is we don't need to worry about having our own nuclear deterrence. We can rely on the US, and in turn the US relies on us for air and primary/secondary support in times of war, via rearming/fuel/layovers/etc. This isn't to say we haven't ever carried nuclear weapons(US) in our bombers either, we did. A lot during the cold war. Or that we didn't run joint interdiction missions with the US either, because we did.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Teancum]

The scale and cost of the Manhattan project is one that still amazes me, and the more that I study the project the more that I discover it was by far and away much larger than I ever could have imagined. I've heard stories that at least at one time or another the Manhattan project consumed as much as half of the GDP for the entire United States.... during the middle of World War II and including the Liberty ship production, all of the bombers, fighters, and other weapons and even consumer goods produced at the time. In other words, nearly half of all Americans were in some way or another involved with producing those first nuclear weapons in the 1940's. The USSR had an even larger portion of its population engaged in that research in the late 1940's while they didn't have to deal with pesky issues like being engaged in a desperate war as well.

While I will agree that those who steal the research from American and Russia are not likely to repeat the same mistakes of those two nuclear programs, it still is an insanely expensive process for anybody to make these weapons. It isn't something a small time terrorist is going to come up with on their own. Dollar for dollar, there are many other much more cost effective ways to bomb somebody that doesn't involve nuclear weapons.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[AbrasiveCat]

We (the US) shared most of our nuclear bomb secrets from WWII with the Canadians. It was part of an agreement we had (have?) with them. (They are our best buddies, who do you think is our biggest source of oil!) I suspect they could whip up a bomb in a year or less if they wanted.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

I'll trade you your pigeons for our Canadian Geese infestation.....

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

Actually, you'd need more than a Fat Man or Little Boy sized bomb to "wipe out" New York City. You could kill a lot of people with such a device but you could not wipe out New York City with one. If this site is to be believed you couldn't even wipe out Manhattan, though you could get a large portion of it.....

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

I've heard stories that at least at one time or another the Manhattan project consumed as much as half of the GDP for the entire United States

You heard wrong. The Manhattan project cost around $2,000,000,000 in 1940s dollars. The US GDP in 1940 was right around $100,000,000,000.

This is why the people that say we need a "Manhattan project" for green energy have no idea what they are talking about. The US Department of Energy has an annual budget that's pretty damn close to what the Manhattan project cost when adjusted for inflation. This site says that $2,000,000,000 in 1945 dollars is worth $24,000,000,000 and change. DoE's FY2009 budget was $24,100,000,000.

All that notwithstanding, the Manhattan project did have some impressive statistics in other areas. Picking one off the top of my head, the uranium enrichment plants consumed around 10% of the total electrical production for the entire United States.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

NORAD's Deputy commanders have all been Canadian too....

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

Why don't you take your tinfoil hat off? If the news didn't come out now that their intended client was Venezuela it would certainly have come out at trial. Not everything is a US Government conspiracy ya know....

And what's with the quote marks around "traitors"? They are traitors. The fact that they got caught before they managed to do any damage doesn't mean they weren't attempting to commit treason and/or espionage.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[daem0n1x]

Yeah, so much bullshit. Nobody can stand Chavez anymore.

Since he's in power, poverty rate has plummeted from 42% to 28%. Oh, the horror. He nationalised mineral resources and now the poor foreign oil companies can no longer take all the oil they want for free. This is outrageous. For the first time in their lives, millions of Venezuelans have health care and education. I don't know how they can't stand so much misery.

Really, Chavez has to go before Venezuela ceases to be a third world country. I don't think the people can stand that kind of suffering.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[sznupi]

Tinfoil hat? Even here too many people assumed Venezuela was actually involved; now imagine general population, especially people that still think Iraq was attacked because of involvement in 9/11 & WMDs.

Quote marks are perfectly valid because, technically, no actual treason has taken place. Hypothesizing what they might have done in the future is a newspeak in itself (and still, do take note subtle differences between writing traitors, vs. "traitors", vs. not traitors)

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Clsid]

As a Venezuelan living in Venezuela, I can confirm this. He still has support of people that rely on the Venezuelan equivalent of government food stamps, but hey, those people will support a trained monkey if it gives them money. Upcoming congress elections on the 26th will actually tell us how popular Chavez really is in Venezuela. Oh and that Argentinian couple is really stupid. To think that the Venezuelan government could actually pull something like this off. They cannot even make electricity work in the country, or even simple paperwork for every day tasks. Just the thought of them creating a nuclear bomb is ridiculous.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

Tinfoil hat? Even here too many people assumed Venezuela was actually involved

That proves people are idiots who are too lazy to read the whole article. It does not prove any sort of underlying agenda to create a casus belli, which is what you seemed to be implying was the case.

Quote marks are perfectly valid because, technically, no actual treason has taken place.

Irrelevant. The mens rea was there. They are traitors. They may not have committed treason (and proving treason is difficult anyway due to the Constitutional requirement of confession or two witnesses) but that was their intent.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[sznupi]

Why does it have to be an agenda? It's irrelevant to the issue; a trend of organic type (as very possibly happened with Iraq & WMDs) is even more troubling.

And such small technicality is perfectly relevent IMHO withing such small difference, of a word with and without quotation marks. Especially if the case would be considered entrapment in many areas...

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

A LEO that offers to murder your wife if you pay him $10,000 is trying to entrap you. A LEO that poses as a contract killer after hearing that you are looking for one has not entrapped you.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[sznupi]

And it might be just subtle enough to fall at least somewhere between those two. It seems the mess might have started with them looking for a funding for their research; well, so it was offered, but with a fictional situation of Venezuelan nuclear weapons program and "...but we want those few things in return"? I doubt it's hard to manipulate somebody desperate for funding (and of such importance to the world, at least as far its originators are concerned) to become such "traitor"/traitor/whatever. Especially if contacts didn't have to follow proper ethics of questioning (if only this one was in itself was reliably followed...), if current homeland was totally disregarding revolutionary ideas while some other offering helpful hand, etc.

Re:for those of you who charge hypocrisy

[Shakrai]

I'm playing the world's smallest violin right now. If you are so self-important that you can be "manipulated" into agreeing to betray your country for a few lousy greenbacks then I have zero sympathy for you.

Clues

[cosm]

Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni

I am a such a racist.

Re:Clues

[cosm]

Your assumption of Spanish is indicative of hilarity.

Re:Clues

[clarkkent09]

He's from Argentina, if you have to know.

Re:Clues

[daem0n1x]

Pedro is not Italian. It's a Spanish and Portuguese name. Mascheroni is an Italian family name. He could be anyone in any country of the Americas, where millions of Italian descendants live.

what id like to see

[nimbius]

is more realistic approaches to nuclear nonproliferation. face up to the fact that all countries will inevitably achieve nuclear weapons capability in the near future, and act accordingly with the international community through political and economic incentives to assure all countries are well appraised that, while attractive in the face of gridlock warfare or political strife, the ending outcome of nuclear war is negative for all parties involved. Arms will always proliferate, the question is, how do we proliferate peace.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Arms will always proliferate, the question is, how do we proliferate peace.

Inflicting a military defeat often works wonders, but it may be necessary to do so repeatedly in the case of the stubborn or stupid.

Re:what id like to see

[Starteck81]

That assumes that everyone is equally rational, which we know is not the case. It would only take one psychopath to end the world and laugh as everything around him burned to the ground.

Re:what id like to see

[Threni]

Be good to yourselves....and each other.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

is more realistic approaches to nuclear nonproliferation. face up to the fact that all countries will inevitably achieve nuclear weapons capability in the near future, and act accordingly with the international community through political and economic incentives to assure all countries are well appraised that, while attractive in the face of gridlock warfare or political strife, the ending outcome of nuclear war is negative for all parties involved. Arms will always proliferate, the question is, how do we proliferate peace.

Put it this way:

A. There are some countries who should not be allowed nuclear weapons because they will probably use them.

B. There are some countries who should not be allowed nuclear weapons because they may lose track of them (thus making those weapons available to nations of type A -or- to certain (ahem!) non-governmental organizations who will probably use them.

The Cold War was a dangerous game (and we're not out of the woods yet: many of those weapons still exist and so do the ideological differences for that matter) but the leaders of both sides weren't willing to die for their ideology. That basic rationality is no longer a given, as these weapons proliferate to less politically stable nations.

This (badly mistaken) idea that it's acceptable for anyone to steal nuclear weapons technology because, well, heck, they'll get it eventually is just wrong. Yes, they might get it eventually, but the odds of that happening are reduced if they aren't forced to make the same investment that we and the Soviets made. And you never know: if it comes down to that, they may decide they have better uses for the money. And if not, if they do get nukes but have to take a few years to figure out how, well, that's a few more years of relative safety for the rest of us.

Re:what id like to see

[b4upoo]

I can think of nothing more psychopathic than several former leaders of the USSR. And the bombs did not go flying!
                              I think that has to do with those rational enough to have a team to finance, build and deliver a nuclear device are sane enough to want to avoid the inevitable retaliation that would follow any kind of atomic or nuclear attack. For example several Arab nations have a serious hatred of Israel yet none of those nations want to be turned into a smoking pit which would be a rather easy thing to do. Even that little 9/11 stuff has turned into a real negative for the Arab region with an awful lot of suffering going on over there. Imagine if they had harmed our nation as a whole rather than as a somewhat confined attack.

Re:what id like to see

[Thiez]

> Imagine if they had harmed our nation as a whole rather than as a somewhat confined attack.

'They'? I'm quite sure most of the people suffering (or dying) had nothing to do with the particular attack that I assume you are referring to.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of nothing more psychopathic than several former leaders of the US. And the bombs did not go flying!

FTFY.

Re:what id like to see

[causality]

That assumes that everyone is equally rational, which we know is not the case. It would only take one psychopath to end the world and laugh as everything around him burned to the ground.

That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths. The preferred cure is prevention. If they somehow achieve power and show signs of being psychopaths, and nuclear weapons might be involved, then the people of Venezuela should understand that sometimes a rabid dog needs to be put down.

It's not like there is any shortage of politicians. There are plenty more where that one came from.

A better long-term solution would be to institute a system like the US Constitution except that all political offices are limited to one short term, assigned by lottery from a random selection of all adult citizens, and conducted like a military draft in that refusing to serve could result in imprisonment. Anyone who has ever held office at any level of government is disqualified from ever being selected again either voluntarily or involuntarily. There would still be popular elections occurring at every quarter of a term of office (so every year if it's a 4-year term), but they'd be for the purpose of deciding whether someone holding office should be removed prematurely and replaced by a new random selection. Corporations and organizations would be strictly forbidden from participating in this process at any level, backed by the penalty of having the entity dissolved and all assets seized and sold off at auction. That's because with the elimination of a need to campaign, any participation by them must be corruption and cannot be called a *wink wink nudge nudge* campaign contribution.

Maybe that idea is flawed and maybe it isn't. The point though is to remove "politician" as a career and to recognize that the people who want power so badly that they'll campaign, accept corruption, etc. in order to obtain it are not to be trusted with it. It would remove the notion of a ruling class and replace it with a notion of civic duty, much like the way we view jury duty. I think what we'd find is that average working people are not eager to obtain nuclear weapons and play silly games based around flirting with utter destruction.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

You just read all that from the back of the Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker box, didn't you?

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "psychopathic" leaders from the USSR only cared about one thing. POWER! That's all the cared about. However, launching a full scale nuclear war would render their cities into smoldering ruins with nothing to show for it. Basically, between the US and USSR, it was a classic game of chicken.

Now with religious (Islamic) leaders at the helm... Well, they might actually burn the world to win Jihad against sinners in the eyes of Allah. Real honest-to-God religious convictions at the helm of a nuclear arsenal is not what you want.

Re:what id like to see

[causality]

The Cold War was a dangerous game (and we're not out of the woods yet: many of those weapons still exist and so do the ideological differences for that matter) but the leaders of both sides weren't willing to die for their ideology. That basic rationality is no longer a given, as these weapons proliferate to less politically stable nations.

I'm confident the leaders of major world powers wouldn't ever have to die for their ideology. The days of the king having the balls to lead his troops into war and have his sons fight alongside him are long over. No, they'd be sheltered in a bunker somewhere with years and years of stored non-perishable supplies.

It is the general population that would die. As there is no political power or tax money to be obtained from a mass of dead people, the leaders would lose the only things they ever cared about. It would possibly be a fate worse than death for them. That's why they displayed some rationality when confronted with concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction.

This (badly mistaken) idea that it's acceptable for anyone to steal nuclear weapons technology because, well, heck, they'll get it eventually is just wrong. Yes, they might get it eventually, but the odds of that happening are reduced if they aren't forced to make the same investment that we and the Soviets made. And you never know: if it comes down to that, they may decide they have better uses for the money. And if not, if they do get nukes but have to take a few years to figure out how, well, that's a few more years of relative safety for the rest of us.

Right there you seem to acknowledge yourself that sustained ignorance of how to build such weapons is not a long-term solution. It must be assumed that at some point some very dangerous and very crazy people are going to obtain a nuke. Keeping such information out of their hands serves only one purpose and that is to buy us time. We should be using that time to come up with better long-term solutions, like detecting the facilities used to build such things or tracking the transportation of the required materials or rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.

Re:what id like to see

[marcobat]

That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths.

Silly me! i thought it was a requirement.

Re:what id like to see

[marcobat]

According to your reasoning about A (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) and B (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427730/) the USA should not be allowed to have nuclear Weapons.

Re:what id like to see

[jackbird]

rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.

How, exactly, would that work? Also, the tracking and the detecting is, I believe, what the IAEA has been doing for decades, and Kim Jong Il still got the bomb.

Re:what id like to see

[Ethanol-fueled]

Which is why the world superpowers need to get together and wipe the Arab states(and Israel) off the face of the map, then split the profits from the resources.

Do you get misty envisioning at least 50 more years of driving comfortable climate-controlled SUV's with DVD players in 'em to distract your 5 kids during the grueling 1/4-mile trip to Whole Foods(tm)?

Do you get misty envisioning the Arab women in your countries finally empowering themselves and flinging the rags off their faces to share their beauty and companionship with cultured, large-dicked white men who bathe on a regular basis and know how to treat women with the respect they deserve?

Those damn shin-kickers have been toying with us and trolling us for too long. It's high time we bring in the Orkin men to take those vermin out.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true only if you buy into the theory that a psychopath can easily become a leader of a country that can muster enough resolution and resourcefulness to come up with working nuclear weapons in sufficient amount to "end the world".

If you stop and think about it for a while, you'll realize how wrong you are.

Re:what id like to see

[TheRedDuke]

What really scares me is not that someone is calling for the extermination of entire peoples and states (it's been done before); but that while reading this post, for a brief moment...I seriously considered the proposal.

Re:what id like to see

[WillDraven]

While this sounds nice theoretically, you would be amazed at the amount of horrible damage one idiot could cause in a single year.

Re:what id like to see

[cdrguru]

I believe what the poster was saying (and I agree with) is that as a State the USSR was unwilling to sacrifice its population to win a war against the US.

Iran clearly has no such compunctions. They are willing to sacrifice their population over an election. There are a number of other states and non-governmental groups that would be more than happy to start a nuclear war because regardless of the lives lost their ideology would survive.

Unfortunately, there is no technology that allows for remote sensing of nuclear materials in a bomb. At extremely close range you can (probably? hopefully?) detect some increase above background radiation and the US is counting heavily on that today. You cannot stand off in Earth orbit and detect even a big pile of unshielded uranium much less a subcritical mass bomb that is shielded.

Right now it seems Iran is a special case of thumbing their nose at the world and saying they are going to do whatever the heck they want regardless of what anyone says about it. Sanctions that affect the population aren't going to have much effect on the decision makers. This is likely to turn into a very nasty war because they are certainly going to take out Israel as soon as they have the capability to do so. Their leaders have said so, their national identity says so and they have never said that was off the table. So of course, Israel says they are going to take them out first. So far, I believe the US has requested they hold off but that state of affairs isn't going to last forever. If Israel gets hit - either as a first strike or as a result of not destroying every weapon in their first strike - the US will pretty much be committed to following up with a strike on Iran. Which then triggers the rest of the Muslim world declaring war on the US.

Frankly, I don't see a way out of it. Iran certainly isn't going to abandon their status as a Muslim theocratic nation whose obligation is to destroy the state of Israel. The US is certainly going to honor its committments to Israel. The rest of the Muslim world isn't going to stand by and watch millions of Muslims be killed.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the fuck over it. I could build a zippe type centrifuge cascade with alluminum rotors given a cnc lathe and $20,000.

While you osterragees are trying to keep the 3rd world in the dark ages technologically: the inevitable march of progress and globalization is slowly herding 1940s technology to even the most backwards of despots.

If you think we can continue to rely on non-proliferation to prevent nuclear terrorism: you're an idiot.

The only solution is the elimination of population centers via telecommerce, and breakthroughs in transportation of resources. Cities will be getting population haircuts as meat-time becomes more and more irrelevant in the face of the cloud. Once again they'll return to industrial centers focused on transportation and shipping rather than representing some sort of cultural commercial renaissance. What cities remain will be underground fortresses buried under concrete.

Re:what id like to see

[causality]

That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths.

Silly me! i thought it was a requirement.

A decadent and/or broken people won't allow reasonable people to rule. Children of divorce are unlikely to respect them. Reasonable people won't give them the phony sense of worth (the one that comes from "us and them") that they want, so reasonable people won't appeal to them. They aren't sexy. They haven't spent a good portion of their lives learning how to manipulate and market and tell you what you want to hear (how to cater to your base nature, your ego). They haven't mastered the art of doing one thing while saying another while pretending like there is no hypocrisy in it, while lying to you with a straight face as though nothing were amiss. Reasonable people don't have glitter and pizzaz and charisma. They just have their reason.

Reasonable people are outgunned, out-classed and out-ruthlessed (if such can be a word) by those who will say or do anything, absolutely anything to get your support. Reasonable people won't whore themselves out to the highest bidder, to appeal to the most powerful. They tend to be anonymous and/or marginalized. They tend not to make a big production, a huge public spectacle, of their reason. They just see what is right and do it according to their reason.

So yeah, sociopathy is a requirement when most of the electorate is governed by fear, ego, gratification, and a failure to be fulfilled by the way they live their own private lives. It's a requirement when so many families are broken and so many people are so overwhelmed by their own existence that they cannot see beyond their own immediate personal concerns. It's a requirement when politics becomes all about charisma and allure and not about sound policy rooted in solid reason. Most of all, it's a requirement when government has become totally out of control and unaccountable to the people and this is accepted as normal.

Like I said, the cure is prevention. Otherwise it's a very large downward spiral from there. Otheriwse it gets much, much worse before it has a hope of getting even slightly better. Once these self-reinforcing, feedback-loop processes are set in motion, it's hell itself to have a chance at breaking their momentum and returning to something more... well, reasonable.

Re:what id like to see

[causality]

While this sounds nice theoretically, you would be amazed at the amount of horrible damage one idiot could cause in a single year.

I greatly prefer the horrible damage caused by genuine temporary idiocy to the immeasurable damage caused by carefully calculated incompetence in the style of "Problem, Reaction, Solution" currently perpetrated ad nauseum by our ruling class. Any day. Without question. No contest about it.

Re:what id like to see

[Dexter Herbivore]

Really? Now consider that you are one of those power hungry leaders of the USSR. Imagine, if you will, that a John Wayne-like movie star who played cowboys and similar such characters got into power as the president of the US. Said cowboy then institutes programs which destabilize geo-political regions and starts brushfire wars and police actions all over the world. He also indicates that he would be willing to launch a pre-emptive strike...

Reagan was a scary man.

Re:what id like to see

[Mr. Slippery]

There are some countries who should not be allowed nuclear weapons because they will probably use them.

Determinations by the U.S. or other nuclear powers about who should be "allowed" to possess nuclear weapons are not only ethically laughable, but a ridiculous impossibility. "Ok, here's the rule: only we can have these. Honestly, we promise not to use them again. Shit, Russia's got 'em. Ok, only we and Russia can have these, seriously. Damn it, U.K.! Ok, only us, the Russkies, and the Brits. And the French. Fuck. And the Chinese. Ok. But no more, you hear me? Hey, India, put that down! Israel, I'm going to pretend I didn't see that! Pakistan, what the hell? Oh, India did it so you can too, huh? Let me tell you, mister -- Hey! North Korea! God DAMN it!"

It's not a question of what should be "allowed". As things stand now, we have neither moral authority nor the practical ability to stop other nations from developing nuclear weapons. To gain the moral authority, we have to give up our own; to gain the practical ability, we need to work together with all other nations to form a legal and social framework where any nation creating weapons of mass destruction is see as the enemy of all mankind.

Re:what id like to see

[khallow]

there is only two countries that has for sure used and continues to use nuclear weapons in the form of depleted uranium weapons

Depleted uranium rounds are not nuclear weapons. They could have made them out of tungsten, a nonradioactive material, and they'd still have almost the same killing power. Depleted uranium is cheaper and has some slight material advantages.

As to the danger of Sarah Palin? I doubt someone who doesn't know what nuclear weapons are would have a clue.

Re:what id like to see

[WillDraven]

I'm not defending the status quo at all. And I like the basic premise for your system here. I just think it would need a bit more polish, maybe some sort of competency exam to keep out the truly stupid/malicious/insane.

And there is the small problem of the bloody revolution we would need to have in order to throw out the current rulers and get it implemented.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

I believe what the poster was saying (and I agree with) is that as a State the USSR was unwilling to sacrifice its population to win a war against the US.

Yes, unlike some of the other drain-bamaged individuals here, you take my meaning correctly. More to the point, the Soviet leadership was probably willing to sacrifice some percentage of its population, but it most certainly wasn't willing to sacrifice itself. Now, one of the tenets of waging a nuclear war is that you don't take out the other side's leaders, because then there won't be anyone left to say "stop, we give up" and have the authority to make it stick. It's unlikely that we would have specifically targeted Russia's leaders for just that reason, but in all-out nuclear war nobody is exactly safe. Regardless, Russia's government was never willing to risk it once we made it clear that Russia wouldn't survive the attempt.

I wish you folks that think that this it's just so gosh-darned unfair that the United States (and, I might, pretty much every other member of the nuclear club) doesn't want Iran to have nukes would pause just for a moment. Look past your anti-American sentiment, and realize exactly what we are talking about here, what the risks actually are. CdrGuru made a pretty good case that Iran is not to be trusted with the things: maybe no nation can, in the long run, but in the short run some countries are far more dangerous than others.

Re:what id like to see

[dkleinsc]

In addition to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been more recent efforts, most notably by Paul Wolfowitz (as Deputy Secretary of Defense), to make nuclear weapons something the US will consider using regularly.

On the upside, the latest nuclear treaty between the US and Russia should help. As far as what us normal people can do about the threat of nukes, here's the instruction guide.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

Get the fuck over it. I could build a zippe type centrifuge cascade with alluminum rotors given a cnc lathe and $20,000.

I see. So, in your learned opinion, the only aspect of nuclear weapons development that counts is the fuel? Are you serious? Really, please do a little Googling on the history of weapons development before you come back here. Russia stole a lot of information from us during the Cold War, and a lot of that was data (math and simulations) on how to maximize yield (among other things), not just how to purify fissionable materials.

There's a lot going on here, a lot of information that can and should remain secret. Furthermore, as an American citizen whose taxes went to pay for that development, I don't particularly see any reason why the likes of Iran should get it for free. Make them pay, like we did.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

According to your reasoning about A (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) and B (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427730/) the USA should not be allowed to have nuclear Weapons.

What?

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

Well, duh, the US is the biggest terrorist country on the planet, and most dangerous, and most out of control.

What?

Re:what id like to see

[sznupi]

Eh, Venezuela wasn't involved here at all; it was a ruse created by US agents to capture "unreliables"; stop saying things like it is involved / I fear we will see, in a few short days, 50+% of US population convinced that Venezueala wants to build (and via stealing from the Righteous Ones) the bomb, anyway. :/

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

As to the danger of Sarah Palin? I doubt someone who doesn't know what nuclear weapons are would have a clue.

I have a feeling that, if Sarah Palin ever makes it anywhere near the White House, the Pentagon will make very, very sure she never gets hold of a nuclear football.

Re:what id like to see

[jjohnson]

The only solution is the elimination of population centers via telecommerce, and breakthroughs in transportation of resources.

Oh... well, if that's all we have to do, let's get on it!

Re:what id like to see

[Tablizer]

*cough* Bush *cough* Palin *cough*

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

Depleted uranium rounds are not nuclear weapons.

Yeah, the GP pretty much shot his credibility in the foot with the comment. Depleted uranium is used because it's very dense and therefore has more kinetic energy at a given velocity. What cracks me up about that is that, while it is radioactive, it's depleted uranium. Spent fuel, which wasn't even weapons grade to begin with.

The GP must lump anything that uses radioactive materials into the "nuclear weapon" category. I wouldn't be surprised if thinks smoke detectors are nuclear weapons.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

You just read all that from the back of the Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker box, didn't you?

No. But if you disagree, please feel free to indicate where.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Reagan was a scary man...if you were a coward.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. I could be wrong, since I've never actually talked to a terrorist, but the impression I get is that Osama Bin Laden and his like are generally motivated by power and politics, sort of a twisted "you messed with my country, now I'll mess with yours" kind of deal. Yes, a lot of them talk about their faith as a motivating factor, but it seems more like a lower level of the same kind of manipulations we see here when politicians try to tell us that we're supposed to do mean, stupid things because God Loves America.

Not to say that it would somehow be better to die in a nuclear holocost because of a manipulative psychopath instead of a religious one, but it seems like we'd be better off opposing psychopaths than going after entire cultures, which just gives their psychopaths more credibility.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

the US will pretty much be committed to following up with a strike on Iran. Which then triggers the rest of the Muslim world declaring war on the US.

I also don't think that a lot of people posting here understand that modern thermonuclear weapons are not twenty kiloton toys like Fatman and Littleboy. Well, we do have quite a range of yields available to us. Depending upon how hard we decided to hit them Iran, and its State ideology, could easily cease to exist.

In the old days we used to call this "brinksmanship." The Russians haven't been playing that particular game for some time now, but apparently Iran thinks it can get away with it.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.

How, exactly, would that work? Also, the tracking and the detecting is, I believe, what the IAEA has been doing for decades, and Kim Jong Il still got the bomb.

Yes, and detecting nukes is a joke. Take any of the major shipyards: the Feds admit they can't even begin to inspect more than a tiny fraction of the goods that go through them every single day. We live in a goldfish bowl, and sooner or later the cat is going to knock it over.

Re:what id like to see

[quokkaZ]

Further to that the US has threatened to use nuclear weapons on many occasions, probably more times that all other nations put together:

Empire and Nuclear Weapons

Re:what id like to see

[Decker-Mage]

What really scares me is reading or hearing of such an event from the news would not surprise me in the least.

Re:what id like to see

[andersenep]

Put it this way: A. There are some countries who should not be allowed nuclear weapons because they will probably use them.

There is only one country that has used nuclear weapons in an offensive manner. Should the United States not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons?

Re:what id like to see

[DigitalJanitor]

After this last year, I might not be as amazed as you think.

Re:what id like to see

[manwargi]

Would that I had the points to mod you up.

Re:what id like to see

[Shakrai]

In the old days we used to call this "brinksmanship." The Russians haven't been playing that particular game for some time now

Threatening to target a neighboring country with nuclear weapons because you don't like what they are doing isn't brinksmanship?

Re:what id like to see

[rtfa-troll]

Right; even if they aren't actually psychos, they came across as if they are which drives logs of other people to think about getting nukes.

Re:what id like to see

[dargaud]

Interesting idea. It was indeed used in some classical greece cities. I'd combine that with a long-term congress with oversee and/or weak veto power (a bit like the chamber of lords). Take the best of those random officials at the end of their term, with 'best' being subjective (voted by the people, those who got closest to their objective, etc) and put them in this long-term congress for life.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

You jest. Why?

Do you believe we can more easily keep 5/6ths of the planets human population ignorant for the rest of eternity?

Perhaps a more appetizing solution is that we create some sort of totalitarian police state where we can keep iron arrow heads from being smuggled across borders?

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all on wikipedia if you know the right search terms.

Just because you're bedazzled by nuclear science doesn't mean it's hard to make a mushroom cloud.

Most of the R&D you're talking about was dedicated to optimizing yield of bombs/kg of fissile material.

In this: the US was able to more efficiently leverage what strategic uranium enrichment production capabilities it had to maximize it's Mutually Assured Destruction penis size.

Just like so many people: you confuse the complexity of the refined, highly-engineered, state of the art, with the crude but effective proof of concept.

If these things were as difficult as you would have us believe: they would have never been able to get it to work in the first place.

99% of R&D is figuring out all the methods which don't accomplish your goal.

Given the benefit of hindsight(which is necessary in order to continue maintaining a workforce of nuclear engineers) the difficulty of recreating success in it's most basic form(1940's style) is a small fraction of the process of first discovering it.

Your comment about your tax dollars at work just further suggests to me that you have no idea what you're talking about.

When despots get fissile material: they build bombs.

Non-proliferation is focused entirely on uranium enrichment for a reason: information wants to be free, and FUD isn't enough to keep Iran nuclear free.

Centrifuges were the most easily controlled bottleneck, and they are uncontrollable. The gig is up. Game over. Non-proliferation is a lost cause.

Are we going to continue poluting the planet with coal because we're afraid of plutonium falling in the wrong hands or are we going to recognize the nuclear security theater for the fraud that it is and make a bold change in foreign policy?

I feel bad for people in city. They don't know what they don't know. In that: they're trusting their lives to some very misinformed assumptions.

The government is flying by the seat of their pants on this one. It's a confidence game that they're losing but they don't know an acceptable alternative.

Once again, I've done everyone a favor and penetrated the emotional hangups and identified the elephant in the room. The solution that everyone knows is necessary but is avoiding facing the facts because they believe by ignoring a problem it goes away.

You guys can do what you want.

Personally:
I'm gonna be holed up in my command post waiting for the world to fall apart. You'll be singing a different tune when you want to barter with me for MREs.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some countries *** which *** should not be allowed nuclear weapons because they actually used them.

Fixed for you!

Re:what id like to see

[khallow]

As things stand now, we have neither moral authority nor the practical ability to stop other nations from developing nuclear weapons.

First, there is a widely accepted morally compelling reason for nonproliferation even in a situation where various parties have nuclear weapons, namely, to reduce the loss of life from use of nuclear weapons. But there is a big problem with your assertion above, which I'll describe in some detail.

Morality is arbitrary and subjective. Moral authority can easily be obtained by flipping the appropriate bit in your belief system and having the military power to back up that choice.

The elephant in the room here is using nuclear force on any country which attempts directly or allows someone in its region of political control to get nuclear weapons. If the use of nuclear weapons as weapons ever becomes common, this is one possible outcome. For example, one such scheme, appearing in some of Jerry Pournelle's science fiction work, is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium">CoDominium an alliance between the US and USSR that lasts about a century (before ending in a full blown nuclear war). Everyone else is reduced to the status of client states and from what I understand, only the two superpowers are permitted to have nuclear weapons or other WMDs.

If you can get nuked (and this can range from a single demonstration of might with a small nuke to obliteration of your entire country and its population) just for having certain nuclear technologies or allowing "terrorists" (the official definition being people whose presence is enough to make you a target for military force) to use your country to build a nuclear weapon (presuming you don't fully cooperate with the CoDominium expeditionary force that's going to move in and cleanse the area of anyone who might be a terrorist), that's going to provide a mighty disincentive to developing nuclear weapons.

And that's one of the points of nuclear nonproliferation now (which I consider even more important than the loss of life from use of nuclear weapons): to reduce the incentive for creating a global tyranny.

Re:what id like to see

[Dexter Herbivore]

Where does cowardice come into it? I'm trying to talk from the Soviet point of view. They firmly believed that Reagan would start WW3.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the point A. But, unfortunately we are the only one that have been used it (Hiroshima Nagasaki). So my conclusion, nobody should develop nuclear weapons. This is a stupid dream :(

Re:what id like to see

[mjwalshe]

the problem with single term limits is that it takes your first term or at least several years to know how the system works and to know when the civil servants are running a line and getting you to do what they want!

Re:what id like to see

[moonbender]

Bush seemed pretty serious about his religious convictions. So seem many of your (assumedly) fellow countrypeople. And unlike Ahmadinejad he did have the bomb and he did start a war against another country.

Re:what id like to see

[moonbender]

Nice strategy of denial there. Also try crying and flailing about with your arms next time you hear an argument you don't like.

Re:what id like to see

[JamesP]

That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths. The preferred cure is prevention. If they somehow achieve power and show signs of being psychopaths, and nuclear weapons might be involved, then the people of Venezuela should understand that sometimes a rabid dog needs to be put down.

Don't underestimate the power of fanatical leftism / nacionalism, it's as powerful as religious fanatism.

By the way, Nacionalism + Socialism, Nationalsocialism, in German it's sozialism, or to make shorter, Na(so)Zi

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

And some countries shouldn't have nuclear weapons because they already used them against people before.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much subjectivity in these statements - who decides whose incapable of having nuclear weapons? Who decides whose a "mad man" and who is not? For much of the rest of the civilized world, George Bush wasn't playing with a full stack - why was it ok for the U.S. to possess nuclear weapons? The U.S. actually used them before - why is it alright for them to have them still? If we believe that the U.S. and other nations like it, follow a democratic process, who is to say one day some madman doesn't get elected?

Re:what id like to see

[Tweenk]

The killer psychopath does not take over the leadership of a nuclear armed country. He goes around killing people with his hands.

The power and control freaks are not psychopaths, and are capable of enough rational thought to realize that upon launching a preemptive nuclear attack they will die along with their country, which will be reduced to dust in massive retaliation.

Additionally, without nuclear weapons, the USSR would have invaded Western Europe in the 60s at the latest. The UN Security Council would have no real power, and wars between superpowers would probably continue.

Re:what id like to see

[jjohnson]

I jest because your proposed solution is simpleminded and unworkable. I jest because I believe that we're collectively incapable of choosing a wise direction for humanity and then going in that direction, and I've got a lot of history to back me up. I jest because I understand that we are not in control of our collective fate. And I jest because when people like you get any measure of political power, it tends to end in mass graves for those who disagree with you.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

My solution is elegant and effective. It makes the species more disaster resistant.

What do you propose we do? Lean back and accept our fates? Stockpile marshmallows in-case we're one of the last ones to die?

Humanity has risen to the cause of serving greater purposes on more than one occasion throughout history.

You're worried about nukes. I'm worried about the ease by which a dedicated adversary could re-direct an asteroid at this planet in the next 200 years. I'm worried about the very real threat that the very same asteroid won't need re-direction in the first place.

What merit do urban landscapes have to justify their existence?

As far as the snipe about mass graves: what's your logic? I'm here to help prevent death and disaster. Not cause it.

Re:what id like to see

[Tablizer]

Indeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg

Re:what id like to see

[jjohnson]

My solution is elegant and effective.

And impossible to achieve, therefore not worth considering.

People in the U.S. can't even agree to provide universal health care for themselves, when it's demonstrably cheaper and demonstrably better at providing higher quality health care, as the rest of the first world countries have proven over several decades. It's a no-brainer, and the U.S. could pick from any of five or six different models and learn from their experience to fix the parts that need improvement, yet they don't do it. And yet you think that we could collectively decide to radically alter how everyone lives and works?

What do you propose we do? Lean back and accept our fates?

I'm not defending the status quo, but I'm also not pretending that I know what will save us. I do what I can around me to improve things, and accept what I can't change.

As far as the snipe about mass graves: what's your logic? I'm here to help prevent death and disaster. Not cause it.

The history of the 20th century is my logic. The great murderers of the 20th century were all leaders who decided to drag humanity towards a better way to live--Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Mussolini (and now a generation of radical Islamists)... What tends to happen when someone with a vision realizes that he can't get everyone to co-operate, is he decides to force the issue under the belief that history will vindicate him.

History continually demonstrates that people with grand visions for how we should all live, should be feared, not followed.

Re:what id like to see

[ScrewMaster]

Nice strategy of denial there. Also try crying and flailing about with your arms next time you hear an argument you don't like.

Well, when someone presents a completely illogical argument that is irrelevant to current circumstances, I generally don't feel the need to say more: the author of said arguments has usually made my case for me.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

wooosh!

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe sugar catches more flys than vinegar and that the only way to change people's behavior is through ergonomics and economics.

I'm entirely opposed to government market intervention, even when it would suite my idealogy. My pet projects don't get exceptions when I say I'm a libertarian.

That's why I've dedicated my life to inventing the technologies which facilitate the future I see in my vision.

Re:what id like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.

How, exactly, would that work? Also, the tracking and the detecting is, I believe, what the IAEA has been doing for decades, and Kim Jong Il still got the bomb.

Take a government's bomb-grade material, have that government's weapons manufactuers melt it down (bad choice of words :) and ship the no-longer-bomb-grade material to a civilian fuel company.

The civilian fuel company doesn't even have to be in the same country. And back in the real world, it isn't. Google "Megatons to Megawatts". A decent chunk of the fuel for America's power plants comes from decomissioned Soviet warheads. One of the greatest success stories of the post Cold-War era. When we finally realized they didn't want to nuke us (but happened to be short on cash), we realized we had plenty of cash to go around, and could use the fuel.

Re:what id like to see

[moonbender]

You say his argument is both completely illogical and irrelevant.

What was illogical about his argument? He really didn't even make an argument, he just delivered two facts that plug into the argument you made for him. The upshot being that your argument has an interesting conclusion: the US is among the countries that should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons (and in fact, this is true for all countries). I think that's an unsurprising result and shows that your argument is sound.

As for being irrelevant, well maybe. The argument that the US and any other country shouldn't have nuclear weapons pales against the reality that the US and many other countries do have nuclear weapons. However, the non-proliferation debate tends to imply differences between "legal" nuclear weapon states and the "nuclear upstarts" where there aren't any. Non-proliferation can only be attained if nuclear disarmament goes along with it.

Also, you really had it coming with your phrasing of argument A. At first I thought you were being ironic...

Re:what id like to see

[jjohnson]

> I'm entirely opposed to government market intervention

So if you were American, and the U.S. gov't said "here is a plan to provide higher quality health care than we have now, to every American, at 55% of the cost we currently pay", you'd oppose that.

This is not to denigrate your libertarian beliefs, or your feelings about UHC. Rather, it's a very neat illustration of the problem. Everyone in America could have high quality health care at a much reduced collective price. This is a solved problem. It's been demonstrated to work elsewhere over decades. Yet you would oppose its implementation for philosophical reasons. The better world that you see is radically different from the better world I see, and neither of us are spiteful or malicious in our beliefs. We both sincerely believe that we should all go in the same direction, but the directions we choose are opposite.

This is why I jest. This is why I think we don't have collective control over our fate. These well-meaning differences are mutually exclusive. We can't possibly all agree to either have UHC or all leave the cities and start telecommuting.

Good for you for inventing technologies that lead to a better world. I hope you're successful.

TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[guanxi]

If you read the TFA, you will learn that the government of Venezuela was not involved at all. The accused didn't sell secrets to anyone but an undercover FBI agent. While trying to sell nuclear secrets to a foreign government is definitely a problem, it's not true that they were "giving nuclear secrets to Venezuela".

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[oldhack]

The headline most likely is a douchebaggery.

Fission bomb is a technology that's more than half a century old. There isn't much secret to be stolen to build a crude bomb.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Eternal Vigilance]

Yeah, I found that little bit of propaganda to be exceptionally vile when I first read of this a few hours ago.

But for the U.S. it's demonize two birds with one stone: The Feds get to play up the fear of nuclear terrorists, and plant the next-after-Iran seed in the public's mind as well.

Even though Venezuela wasn't involved at all, just watch how many "news" outlets echo the "Venezuela's stealing U.S. secrets and building nukes" part of the headline.

So it's win-win for the U.S. government. Who among them cares whether it's true?

"US Couple Arrested For Transmitting Child Pornography To President Obama."

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[DNS-and-BIND]

If you read TFA, you will discover that they THOUGHT they were selling secrets to Venezuela. Very disingenuous there. Would they have sold the secrets to Zambia, or Bulgaria? Spies often act from idealogical reasons, not financial ones.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, some Peruvians swept in at the last minute and scrambled the transmitted code with lasers from their eyes.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[guanxi]

But for the U.S. it's demonize two birds with one stone: The Feds get to play up the fear of nuclear terrorists, and plant the next-after-Iran seed in the public's mind as well.

Even though Venezuela wasn't involved at all, just watch how many "news" outlets echo the "Venezuela's stealing U.S. secrets and building nukes" part of the headline.

So it's win-win for the U.S. government. Who among them cares whether it's true?

Also from TFA:

Kenneth Gonzales, U.S. attorney for New Mexico, said the indictment does not allege the government of Venezuela or anyone acting on its behalf sought or was passed any classified information

So it doesn't appear the US gov't demonized anyone. They didn't write the Slashdot post (AFAIK) and didn't write the AP story.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[guanxi]

Fission bomb is a technology that's more than half a century old. There isn't much secret to be stolen to build a crude bomb.

True, if you already have the materials. The knowledge of how to refine the uranium or plutonium is very hard to obtain.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Saint Stephen]

Ok, he didn't actually sell any nuclear secrets to Venezuela. He only TRIED to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela, to who he thought was Venezuela, but it wasn't actually Venezuela. This being slashdot groupthink, I fully expect this post to be buried immediately.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[WindBourne]

Spies from other nations DO tend to act from idealogical reasons, but these were traitors, not spies. And most traitors operate from a financial POV.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Eternal Vigilance]

So it doesn't appear the US gov't demonized anyone. They didn't write the Slashdot post (AFAIK) and didn't write the AP story.

The story has to come from somewhere. It's not like AP or any of the other outlets covering it were doing investigative journalism. They're stenographers for whatever the government happens to say, and so what makes it into the headlines is a reflection of what they were told. That the Court stenographers - almost all of them, it seems - end up with a particular impression about Venezuela is part of (and part of the reason for) the government's original spin on the story. And that spin is not an accident.

While there is usually a paragraph much farther down about how Venezuela wasn't actually involved in any way, thus giving the government plausible deniability about flat-out lying about Venezuela, understanding and controlling how a story will be relayed by the media is the primary job of those who announce it. In fact, since there was no meaningful risk to the U.S. from these people, the value to the state of a story like this is almost entirely how it is covered.

And as predicted, as of a few hours ago the top story on Google News was from UK's The Guardian: "US couple accused of trying to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela."

Propaganda Accomplished.

It's best to understand the MSM as simply the marketing department of a larger business/government/media entity.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[cowboy76Spain]

Well, if they call themselves periodists, then I expect them not to act as stenographers and give the acurate information, without the spin.

The sad thing is that I am almost sure that you are wrong: the Government may have not be completely innocent when deciding to pose as Venezuelan agents(*), but probably the "journalists" were the ones to spin the news in order to get it to be more important in relation with all other news that day, and the news from the other media companies.

(*) In fact that could even be rationalized: maybe they were not wanting to badmouth Venezuela but found that it would be more credible that posing as agents from, say, San Marino.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[bogjobber]

There's a different version of the story at the New York Times website.

From the article: "On his way to pick up these materials, according to the indictment, he told his wife he was doing the transaction for the money and was no longer an American."

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[daem0n1x]

I'm already seeing Faux News taking advantaged of all the misunderstandings around this issue to call for the invasion of Venezuela.

In my country this would be considered a case of "agent provocateur" and no charges would be admissible in court. It's outrageous that you Americans claim to be so full of freedom and someone can be convicted for caving in to provocation. This means the authorities can coerce someone to commit a crime and then charge the poor bastard. How "free".

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[sznupi]

If you haven't done so already you might turn on, in Slashdot prefs, an email notifying of moderations received. Judging from what was happening with your post for some time, the history of up & down mods might be almost entertaining...

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Clsid]

The funny thing is that people think that Chavez is some kind of evil mastermind of sorts. If he actually gets a nuclear bomb plan, his bureacracy will make sure that nothing comes out of it. Hell, he cannot even make electricity work well in this country and even the national airline aircraft are dropping like flies from the skies. Seriously, most incompetent Venezuelan politician ever, the only thing he's good at is giving speeches that makes people believe he's actually doing something.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Clsid]

It is dirty tricks since all they could have done is said, we got this people for espionage and they are being processed. Making it Hollywood like, generates headlines and the smear campaign they wanted in the first place, since I for one, even question that such a couple even exists. Even if it does, in the end is just politicians using country resources to fight each other. As a Venezuelan, I cannot wait until people throw Chavez out of power but that still makes this piece of news a joke.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Clsid]

On the opposite hand, the whole thing might be a bunch of lies because who cared to confirm if even those people exist, that's right, no one. Just copy and paste from whatever the FBI gave them. In either case Chavez is still an ass and the US govt still manipulates people through the media. Just another day in the world.

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[Eternal Vigilance]

I do have it turned on, but at least for me the notifications only go out a long time after the mods actually happen.

In this case, even though I've received emails about all the replies, I still haven't seen one saying the original post has been modded at all.

It looks like there was a bit of a skirmish. :-)

Re:TFA: Venezuala was not involved

[sznupi]

It might as well mean how specifically a couple potentially receptive (because of their family roots, for example) to one particular "origin" of provocateurs was approached. Heck, even manufacturing some hardships before the process, to make them more receptive, would be also quite easy...

Information wants to be free!

[brit74]

Information wants to be free! There should be no laws against transmitting knowledge! You can't steal information - you're only making a copy of it! [/sarcasm]

Re:Information wants to be free!

[clarkkent09]

Parent is not a troll, his sarcasm is justified. As far as I remember there were plenty of people here who were (seriously) making that very point regarding the wikileaks case.

Re:Information wants to be free!

[cappp]

Wish I had the mod points to vote you up there, you're making an important point and being punished for it.

Re:Information wants to be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point, but on the other hand.....

Information on the Nazi Engima code wanted to be free too.

Re:Information wants to be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't steal information you're only making a copy of it!

No, you can't steal information by making a copy of it. That doesn't mean that you should put the information on how to make a nuclear weapon into the hands of just anyone.

There should be no laws against transmitting knowledge!

Strawman. That's not what the people who oppose excessive copyright, DRM, etc., are saying -- and you know it. There are reasons other than copyright why some information should not be spread to the four winds. They include privacy / protection of information that could be used for fraud, national security, and court orders (not to disclose XYZ during a trial).

Re:Information wants to be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Are you saying intellectual materialism is right?

And this is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't piss off your nuclear scientists. Even retired you better take care of them, or otherwise one or more of them will get past the efforts to watch them, and they'll sell what you didn't want sold.

Keep them happy.

Or buy more bullets.

Sting operation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to his efforts in being both a legendary songwriter and doing his part to help keep our nation safe!

Re:Sting operation?

[Dahamma]

I heard he was working undercover with Chuck Norris!

Re:Sting operation?

[ciaohound]

We can only hope the operation was a total vocal cordectomy.

Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[Clived]

What the hell would Venezuela want nuclear weapons for anyway??

what about the time homer simpson let that kid in

[Joe The Dragon]

what about the time homer simpson let that kid in the foreign exchange in to the plant and give him all kind of plans as well?

Some reasons are better than others.

[blargfellow]

He claims he did it to secure funding for his fusion research. It was more noble than doing it for the cash, I guess...

Re:Some reasons are better than others.

[zippthorne]

Maybe he just thought he could sell the fusion research for a lot *more* cash...

Dynamite Monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, I have to wonder if US Government keeps setting up Los Alamos with suspect people as sure-fire way to keep the modicum of security for this country, sub-par. You could blame managerial incompetence, but that would mean several supposed well-respected institutions of higher learning, and several powerful US Departments and subsequent Congressional oversight committees, are stocked with idiots as well.

On second thought, this is entirely possible.

Could be worse

[sokoban]

As frightening as a nuclear Venezuela is, I'd be more scared by a nuclear Vuvuzela.

Re:Could be worse

[Massacrifice]

As frightening as a nuclear Venezuela is, I'd be more scared by a nuclear Vuvuzela.

I'd be willing to pay you 500$ if you can provide me with the actual plans for such a device. Consider it as a deterrent against my early-bird neighbour's lawnmower.

Re:Could be worse

[Clsid]

Best comment by far. Lmao.

Re:Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know - maybe so Hugo can have a stick as big as his threats? To stop the "evil empire" maybe?

Yu don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium.

[Kaenneth]

They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing filled with used pinball machine parts.

Sad clueless desperate people.

[mspohr]

It sounds like these people had "brilliant ideas" for improving nuclear FUSION but were rebuffed by the people at the lab and later by congressional staffers. They could have been brilliant or just a little disconnected from reality.

It appears that in a desperate attempt to fund their FUSION research, they tried to contact foreign governments with information on building a FISSION bomb (plans downloaded from the Internet) so the FBI obliged by providing a fake Venezuelan contact to trap them.

This is just sad.

Re:Sad clueless desperate people.

[sznupi]

...and the one simple fusion approach that would work this time, honest, was lost.

Re:Sad clueless desperate people.

[JamesP]

Yes, of course, only hot fusion in tokamaks can happen, anything else is crap. Yes, it's another 10B dollars and 20 years, yes we said he same last time, but we're for real now.

OTOH, I would (if I had anything worth) never sell secrets to Venezuela or other megalomaniac country like that. For several reasons including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull

Re:Sad clueless desperate people.

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: Iran

LANL

[Anonymous Coward]

couple working at at 'leading nuclear research facility'

Pssssttt.... don't say it's Los Alamos National Laboratory!

The risks aren't what they were before

[mangu]

"If convicted, the couple would receive life in prison."

The Rosenberg couple received *death* in prison.

Re:The risks aren't what they were before

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot the bastards, Chinese style.

Argentina tied as assylum to Nazi war-criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tell the Jews that there is money, Intellectual Property of Nuclear patents, and their favorite 1/4 jewish Hitler all hiding in Argentina, and faster than you can see a Kite-flying Kike on a bike I assure you that country will be economically pulverised with taxes of all kinds.

what secrets are these?

[ook_boo]

There's something strange about this. How to make atomic weapons is not that difficult, and certainly not secret. Any 14-year-old with an interest in physics and chemistry has enough information to do this. The tough part is that you need a medium-sized country with the infrastructure and budget to refine the materials and manufacture to high specifications.

Re:what secrets are these?

[cdrguru]

Any 14 year-old could probably make an atomic bomb with a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. Such a bomb would be huge and require lots of shielding to be safe to handle - like attaching to an aircraft or loading into a shipping container.

On the other hand, what is required to detonate a subcritical mass is a little bit tricky. It is clearly possible because the US has thermonuclear weapons that are smaller than the core of the first atomic bombs. I'm not sure that A. Q. Khan even had that information, although he was US-trained.

If you want to put a bomb in a shipping container, the Hiroshima bomb would be good enough. If you want to put a bomb into an Amazon box and ship it somewhere in the US that might require a bit more expertise and that is much harder to come by.

Re:what secrets are these?

[RubberDogBone]

They didn't have to actually BE any significant secrets. Just secret enough.

It sounds like the man had a vendetta and a chip on his shoulder and wrote out more of an essay or rant than blueprints. Afterall, if you are just handing over plans, you don't need three months to type it up and have your wife edit the document. No, that sounds like a rant ala the Discovery Channel shooter or the Unabomber.

So the old man was probably off his rocker as well, and his grand scheme to sell bomb ideas may have been nothing but a crackpot idea through and through. And he was a moron for thinking he needed to write out a whole plan for some country to follow as if they couldn't figure it out themselves, and he didn't think for a moment that he was being led around by his nose the whole time. He's a crackpot with delusions of saving the world, even if it means handing over secrets.

But he wasn't arrested for being a crackpot. He was busted for trying to sell something. Whether what he had was any good or not is not really the point.

Re:what secrets are these?

[PPH]

The issue isn't about the general availability of the knowledge. Its about having signed confidentiality agreements as a condition of employment at a 'leading nuclear research facility'.

If I, or your hypothetical 14 year old kid sat down and drew up workable plans for a nuclear weapon, we could sell them to whomever we want. Just as long as we hadn't signed any sorts of secrecy agreement as a government contractor or employee of the same. And we based our designs on publicly available knowledge.

Re:what secrets are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

How to make atomic weapons is not that difficult, and certainly not secret.

how to make a proper centrifuge and how to maximize the yield to insane proportions is secret.

Re:what secrets are these?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Any 14 year-old could probably make an atomic bomb with a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. Such a bomb would be huge and require lots of shielding to be safe to handle - like attaching to an aircraft or loading into a shipping container.

Err, a bare-sphere (no neutron energy manipulation or reflective shielding) critical mass of a plutonium-239 core is only 10kg and with the density of plutonium that translates to a sphere smaller than an orange (9.9cm to be exact).

The reason the original plutonium weapons were so huge is because of low purity of the fissionable materials available, massive over engineering resulting from poor understanding of materials and nuclear processes etc

On the other hand, what is required to detonate a subcritical mass is a little bit tricky.

No such thing exists. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. The critical mass however varies with shape and external factors such as shielding materials capable of changing energies of neutrons or reflecting them back onto their source, temperature of the material, its degree of compression etc.

Re:what secrets are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any 14 year-old could probably make an atomic bomb with a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. Such a bomb would be huge and require lots of shielding to be safe to handle - like attaching to an aircraft or loading into a shipping container.

On the other hand, what is required to detonate a subcritical mass is a little bit tricky. It is clearly possible because the US has thermonuclear weapons that are smaller than the core of the first atomic bombs. I'm not sure that A. Q. Khan even had that information, although he was US-trained.

If you want to put a bomb in a shipping container, the Hiroshima bomb would be good enough. If you want to put a bomb into an Amazon box and ship it somewhere in the US that might require a bit more expertise and that is much harder to come by.

A. Q. Khan was not U.S. trained, he worked for URENCO in the Netherlands. To my knowledge he never set foot on U.S. soil.

Re:what secrets are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand this is Slashdot but I'm pretty sure a 14 year-old couldn't make an atomic bomb.

Re:what secrets are these?

[humphrm]

A.Q. Khan is a terrorist. Despite their penchant for supporting the wrong cause, even the U.S. recognized this fact decades ago, and I'm pretty sure if he came to the U.S. for "training" he wouldn't be such a threat now, he'd be sitting in a supermax.

Re:what secrets are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to put a bomb into an Amazon box and ship it somewhere in the US that might require a bit more expertise and that is much harder to come by.

Hey, a nuclear letter bomb. Sure you only need to get the zip code right, but that seems, well, excessive.

Re:what secrets are these?

[shutdown -p now]

Err, a bare-sphere (no neutron energy manipulation or reflective shielding) critical mass of a plutonium-239 core is only 10kg and with the density of plutonium that translates to a sphere smaller than an orange (9.9cm to be exact).

A bare sphere of critical mass will not produce an (efficient) nuclear explosion, however. It will immediately begin disintegrating itself, and as soon as the mass drops below critical (due to chunks of radioactive fuel blown out), the process stops. The efficiency of such device is very, very low.

Hence you either need a lot more than critical mass (so that, even with low efficiency, the overall yield is high enough), or you need some way to raise the density rapidly and keep it there for at least some time while explosion is going on. The latter is what implosion-type devices do, but their assembly requires some very high precision to get everything right; throw it even a little bit off balance, and it will fizzle. The former approach works even with crude activator such as a gun assembly, but the amount of material needed for it is quite prohibitive. For example, Little Boy, which used this method, contained over 60kg of U, of which less than kg actually contributed to fission - the rest was just blown into radioactive dust. Very inefficient.

To conclude: implosion-type devices require some advanced engineering to assembly, while more crude activators need significantly more radioactive fuel (which is damn hard and expensive to obtain). So we aren't going to see 14 year olds assembling nukes in their basements anytime soon.

Re:what secrets are these?

[andersenep]

Any 14 year-old could probably make an atomic bomb with a critical mass of uranium or plutonium. Such a bomb would be huge and require lots of shielding to be safe to handle - like attaching to an aircraft or loading into a shipping container.

Err, a bare-sphere (no neutron energy manipulation or reflective shielding) critical mass of a plutonium-239 core is only 10kg and with the density of plutonium that translates to a sphere smaller than an orange (9.9cm to be exact).

The reason the original plutonium weapons were so huge is because of low purity of the fissionable materials available, massive over engineering resulting from poor understanding of materials and nuclear processes etc

On the other hand, what is required to detonate a subcritical mass is a little bit tricky.

No such thing exists. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. The critical mass however varies with shape and external factors such as shielding materials capable of changing energies of neutrons or reflecting them back onto their source, temperature of the material, its degree of compression etc.

That sounds very credible, but the handle IgnoramusMaximus does not.

Re:what secrets are these?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

All that is true, but we were talking about governments and the "14 year old" kid was just a wise-crack.

Constructing an explosive-lens type of device is also reasonably well documented these days, while back then required pretty much discovering the process by trial and error.

So it all essentially comes down to resources, which even impoverished mid-sized nations posses these days. That is how North Korea could manage, for example.

Re:what secrets are these?

[Anonymous Coward]

No such thing exists. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. The critical mass however varies with shape and external factors such as shielding materials capable of changing energies of neutrons or reflecting them back onto their source, temperature of the material, its degree of compression etc.

Translation: No such thing exists. Let me continue by explaining the existence of such a thing.

Why do so many people jump try so hard to tell other people their wrong? Do you think it makes you look smarter? It does not. It makes you look like an asshole who makes no attempt at understanding what someone is saying in order to find a way to insult them. Go back under your bridges trolls.

Re:what secrets are these?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I will make an exception in my long standing policy of ignoring ACs and answer this particularly malicious bit of stupidity. The GP claimed that a fissionable material weapon with a "sub-critical" mass is possible, I pointed out that no such thing as a "sub-critical mass" is workable and that all fission weapons must in some way achieve critical mass to function. In fact a "critical mass" is a very pre-requisite of a sustainable chain reaction. That is its definition.

So there is no magical "understanding" of the parent post that is required here as he is plainly in the wrong.

The only troll here is you, who, lacking even basic reading comprehension, decides to butt in with insults over what you do not understand.

Re:Yu don't just walk into a store and buy plutoni

[n6kuy]

*Like*

exactly

[circletimessquare]

the usa should not have nuclear weapons. no nation should

so you should be spending your time pestering those with nukes to get rid of them. not condoning even more nations getting them!

its like "my neighbor has a meth lab. i won't try to get my neighbor to get rid of the meth lab. instead, i will simply support my other neighbor getting his own meth lab, so that its fair"

seriously?

and yet that is some people's reasoning on why nuclear proliferation is ok. its insane

Re:exactly

[ScrewMaster]

its like "my neighbor has a meth lab. i won't try to get my neighbor to get rid of the meth lab. instead, i will simply support my other neighbor getting his own meth lab, so that its fair"

That's about the best analogy I've heard today.

and yet that is some people's reasoning on why nuclear proliferation is ok. its insane

Yes. It is. And that's scary.

"Life"

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that the federal justice system has no concept of "parole" or "time off for good behavior" etc. So chances are this "life in prison" is likely to be a little bit more effective than your wussy state "life in prison".

somebody will find the fissile material

[circletimessquare]

dig it up and refine it secretly, so not even satellites could see it happening

and all you really need i think is some thick walls of lead, a nice shipping container on a ship headed to a port that handles millions of shipping containers, and boom. how do you detect a bomb through thick walls of lead?

Re:Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[demonlapin]

To make FARC the effective government of Colombia?

Re:Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell would Venezuela want nuclear weapons for anyway??

To protect and defend themselves against You-- There's no assault into a country which can pack a punch, period. It is not profitable. Thank Hans Blix for doing the dirty work for you in Iraq and making sure there would be no real high-arm resistance.

Re:Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell would Venezuela want nuclear weapons for anyway??

I'll just assume that you have never tried to sit through one of Chavez's television addresses to the nation.

Power is all that matters.

[elucido]

Power is all that matters. Thats all anyone cares about, thats all governments care about, thats all that matters because might is right.

People buy lottery tickets too

[Shivetya]

and many think they will hit it big alleviating them from having to save for their retirement.

CITE PLEASE

[Alaska Jack]

[needs citation]

1. I bet I know a lot more people in the gun rights movement than you, and I don't know one -- NOT A SINGLE ONE -- who thinks the way that *you* think they do.

2. You say "there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun." Really? So there are "a lot of people" who think psychopaths should have guns? Convicted felons on parole?

3. They may think that only people here legally should have guns, but that is a perfectly defensible position. I have NEVER, EVER seen ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of someone saying that guns are bad for illegal Mexicans, but fine for other illegals.

4. In the same vein, please support you assertion that "lots of people" believe everyone should have the right to bear arms in self defense except Muslims.

5. Failing all this, do you think it might be possible -- just *possible -- that in fact you just got up in front of everyone and tried to pass off your own personal bias as fact?

  - AJ

Re:CITE PLEASE

[arth1]

3. They may think that only people here legally should have guns, but that is a perfectly defensible position. I have NEVER, EVER seen ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of someone saying that guns are bad for illegal Mexicans, but fine for other illegals.

How do you feel about legal Mexicans having guns?
Or legal Muslim Somalians and Yemenites?
Or people arrested and convicted for non-violent charges?

Re:CITE PLEASE

[khallow]

How do you feel about legal Mexicans having guns?
Or legal Muslim Somalians and Yemenites?
Or people arrested and convicted for non-violent charges?/quote? As long as they are responsible and take proper precautions with their weapons, then sure, I don't have a problem with them having guns. Are you claiming I should have a problem with these people?

Re:CITE PLEASE

[Alaska Jack]

like khallow, below, I don't really understand your question. I feel just fine about it. I mean, I don't get it -- how *should* I feel? is it supposed to bother me or something? Why would it? What's your point?

    - AJ

Re:CITE PLEASE

[Teancum]

This misses completely the point of private arms advocates: If everybody has guns, then those who abuse those weapons can presume that all of their neighbors have those weapons and anything they do to seriously piss off their neighbors is likely to get those arms used against them.

Conversely, if nobody has weapons on a "legal basis", only criminals and oppressive government agents have guns. This was tried in Asia several millenia ago and the result was the development of "unarmed" martial arts... Karate, Kung Fu, Judo, and all of the other related forms explicitly to allow the peasants to be able to stand up against would-be aggressors. Europe, on the other hand until the last couple of centuries required everybody to be armed and made it a national obligation.

If they are in America and otherwise behaving as responsible law-abiding people, I don't mind seeing anybody including Mexicans, Somalians, Yemenites, or anybody else bearing arms of any kind. I also respect the decision of Quakers and Mennonites who insist that weapons should never be used... as long as it is a voluntary decision where you give up that right and don't force somebody else to disarm.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[JWSmythe]

You're just wasting your breath. Well, wear and tear on your keyboard. :)

    There are extremists on both sides of any argument. The right to bear arms is definitely one of those arguments. The extremists on both sides will come up with any wild assertion to support their side. Oh my god, people of Mexican descent shouldn't ever have guns. What I do find rather interesting is that the same people who vilify "Mexicans" don't understand that Mexico is the only land crossing into the United States. People from all over Central and South America come to the land of opportunity and prosperity.

    The Muslim argument is that much worse. Would I trust a Muslim with a gun? Well, so far yes. No Muslim has ever threatened to shoot me. Oddly enough, the only threats of that sort have come from Americans, born and raised in the US with no discernible ties back to their ancestors countries.

    Extremists will make it sound like foreign nationals come to the United States to buy guns, and then suicide with a suitcase nuke. Others are purchasing caches of weapons to sell in South America. They'll find the handful of transactions where those not currently allowed to possess firearms did in fact purchase one. They overlook the hundreds of thousands (or more) of other firearms sales that were completely legal, made by US citizens. There was a news story recently about firearms sales at gun shows, and how some sales were happening without the appropriate checks in place. The implication was that all those sales were to terrorists. In reality they weren't.

    I am a gun owner. I do say that everyone should be trained for familiarity and proficiency with firearms. That training isn't only for defense, but to ensure that if they happen to find a firearm, they won't accidentally shoot themselves or an innocent bystander. There are people who don't want guns around for various reasons, and to them I respect their decision. Most of them have handled firearms in the past, recognize the threat they are, and also recognize that if they had access to a firearm, they may make an emotional and deadly decision. I respect their recognition of a potential problem.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[Shakrai]

Europe, on the other hand until the last couple of centuries required everybody to be armed and made it a national obligation.

Europe? Are you sure about that? I know that the Swiss have had a militia tradition for a long time, as did the British, but I'm not aware of the same being true for many other European powers. Could you clarify? If the same was true in other European countries I'd be most interested in learning more about it.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[Shakrai]

What I do find rather interesting is that the same people who vilify "Mexicans" don't understand that Mexico is the only land crossing into the United States

Let me guess, you took geography class in a public school?

Hint: I live in New York State. It shares a land border with another country not named Mexico.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[arth1]

Conversely, if nobody has weapons on a "legal basis", only criminals and oppressive government agents have guns. This was tried in Asia several millenia ago

Guns are several millennia?

The "if guns were outlawed, only criminals would have guns" argument is a self-fulfilling argument, because having a gun would then define you as a criminal. It works well as a slogan, but it's worthless as an argument.

It also fails to take into account the flip side: Almost all gun crimes here in the US are done with guns that were originally bought legally. Take away the legal guns, and the "criminals" (whoever that is) would have a very hard time getting guns, and less of a need to carry arms too.
Furthermore, about half of all crimes involving firearms were not done by "criminals", but by up-to-then upstanding citizens with no previous records. While most "criminals" did not use firearms.

If you still think that everyone is safer with public access to guns, please take a look at this picture. I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Yes, I'd feel much safer if "only criminals had guns", like in many other countries.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[Kidbro]

Europe, on the other hand until the last couple of centuries required everybody to be armed and made it a national obligation

I'm a European, and this sounds very odd to me. Nothing I remember from history classes (and yes, I usually paid attention).
Are you sure you're not confusing "everybody" with the aristocracy, that was supposed to be able to support the king in times of war?
Also, remember that Europe is a divided place. If you think we've managed to squeeze many countries into a small area here today, it pales with how it (effectively) looked some hundreds of years ago.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[sco08y]

3. They may think that only people here legally should have guns, but that is a perfectly defensible position. I have NEVER, EVER seen ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of someone saying that guns are bad for illegal Mexicans, but fine for other illegals.

How do you feel about legal Mexicans having guns?

Having worked with Mexican guys in the Army who carried loaded weapons on a daily basis, I really don't have a problem with it. I know of at least one Mexican immigrant who was a MOH recipient, since I read his autobiography.

Or legal Muslim Somalians and Yemenites?

Can't say about Yemenites, but having worked with Somalis in the Army, etc, etc.

Or people arrested and convicted for non-violent charges?

Again, I've worked with guys who have non-violent charges on their records.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[sco08y]

I already about my experiences with the above groups, but racism, historically and currently, is squarely a phenomenon of the gun control movement. As this black guy with a gun explains:

[after] the Civil War ended in 1865, States persisted in prohibiting blacks, now freemen, from owning guns under laws renamed “Black Codes.” They did so on the basis that blacks were not citizens, and thus did not have the same rights, including the right to keep and bear arms protected in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as whites. ... most States turned to “facially neutral” business or transaction taxes on handgun purchases. However, the intention of these laws was not neutral. An article in Virginia ‘s official university law review called for a “prohibitive taxon the privilege” of selling handguns as a way of disarming “the son of Ham,” whose “cowardly practice of ‘toting’ guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime. Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.” ...

That article has a pretty solid timeline of racist gun control, going all the way up to 1995.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[JWSmythe]

    Sorry about that. It wasn't a mistake. I just didn't clarify that it was the border to the South. I don't hear a lot about people from central and south America sneaking across the Canadian border. :) I've crossed both borders several times. Crossing the Canadian border is a joke in comparison the Mexican border.

Re:CITE PLEASE

[AlexCorn]

Everyone should not be required to own a gun, but everyone should *be able to* own a gun. The right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution, and the Constitution applies to all US citizens on US territory, not just non-felons. We don't strip perjurers of their right to free speech, so why do so many people think it is okay to strip arms rights from violent felons? Both have demonstrated irresponsibility with a particular tool, but why the double standard? They get convicted, serve their time, and should be released as free men, not as sub-citizens who lose part of their constitutional protection.

I don't know* whether the Constitution applies to illegal aliens or not, but if it does I think it should apply 100% - not just partially. The document was not designed to allow rulers to pick and choose which sections apply and which do not.


* I suppose the question of whether it applies is based on which conditions you must meet for it to apply. Obviously the Constitution only applies on US territory. So given that a person is on US territory, does that person have to be a US citizen to be protected by the constitution, or does just occupying a spot on US land afford a person constitutional protection?

Re:CITE PLEASE

[horza]

It sounds a little confused. Until recently (some until a few years ago) many European countries had militiary service, which obliged the whole nation to learn how to use a gun. Previously having a weapon if you could was just common sense, not national obligation, as Kings used to launch wars in Europe pretty much on a whim. It wasn't required though, except in Switzerland which still obliges every male to be armed, every house should have at least one gun per person.

Phillip.

Arm the Homeless

[Attack DAWWG]

That's right. Remember "Arm the Homeless" and the reaction to it?

I dub thee Sir Flamebait of Wrongston

[SuperKendall]

You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun.

Who really says that? I've never heard any gun advocate (nut or not) say anything like that. In fact all gun owners I know are usually more thoughtful and respectful people than the populace at large and certainly not fascist as you paint them to be.

It seems like you are on a bigot hunt, when all you had to do was stay home and look in the mirror. You can be just as bigoted against peoples philosophical standpoints as you can against race...

Re:I dub thee Sir Flamebait of Wrongston

[sznupi]

There seems to be one just above...

And you know, people universally convince themselves that they, & similar people with whom they choose to stay in contact with, represent above average part of the society; tending also to overlook some flaws. Overall, sharing those perceptions doesn't really tell much.

Not to Fret

[Anonymous Coward]

We have Jack Bauer. Nuclear weapons are obsolete.

A humble proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be my pleasure to share my nuclear secrets with you.

As a metter of fact I've been waiting on Craigslist for quite some time now...

you asshole

[circletimessquare]

you let pinball technology fall in the hands of terrorists?

Re:you asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

-tilt-

Venezuela

[Doc Ruby]

Note that this story says absolutely nothing about whether or not Venezuela actually has any nuclear programme or ambitions. The only "Venezuela" in this story is a fake one, made up to sting these traitors.

But this story does tell us something about how Americans have been led to believe that Venezuela does aspire to get a nuke. It's not clear exactly what it tells us about that, but it tells us something about it.

Re:Venezuela

[Clsid]

As I said before, of course this has a propaganda spin, but to even think that Venezuela govt could actually manage such a feat, is to place too much hope on a government who can't even run public utilities companies right. Electricity shortages everywhere, restrictions to acquire foreign currency that has hampered business in general, inflamatory rethoric on presidential speeches that divides the population, and the list goes on and on, but the thing that sticks out the most is incompetence. So nuclear development implies a degree of organization that Chavez is unable to do. My message to all Americans is to relax, ignore him in the media and everywhere else and watch him fall out of power starting with the upcoming Congress elections on the 26th, and then on the presidential one in 2012. Everybody here in Venezuela has too much of his leftist crap already.

Re:Venezuela

[Doc Ruby]

While I agree with you that Chavez is no threat to the US, I will also note that all the deficiencies in Venezuela that you cite were also true of the US under Bush/Cheney, but those autocrats also managed to get the US back into making nuke weapons, under their newly introduced first strike doctrine (which they'd demonstrated with conventional forces in Iraq, but which they explicitly declared in nuke policy). And yes, America had enough of their leftist crap, and chose someone other than their designated successor - who quickly introduced the most aggressive nuke weapon reductions in at least 20 years, and perhaps of all time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union also practiced the kind of political extremism and management incompetence you described, but produced more nukes than any other country, including the US, and was a serious threat to the US, the world, and everyone's safety from nuke war for almost half a century, and its people struggled to end its regime for the entire time, eventually succeeding. Iran isn't too different, and it's trying (and slowly succeeding) to get nukes, while its people struggle to throw off its tyranny.

The point being that incompetence in government, extremism in politics and success in getting nukes are totally independent variables.

I don't know how unpopular Chavez actually is with "everybody" in Venezuela, since he first won election with 56% in 1998, his 1999 constitution was voted in by 80%, 2006 reelection with 63%, and last year over 54% voted to eliminate term limits, which allows Chavez to run as long as he's so popular among Venezuelans - more popular than any American president since Nixon. He's surely unpopular with a lot of people who used to have things a lot better in Venezuela, but the large majority has it better under Chavez, and they seem bent on keeping him. I don't like him, because he's an autocrat. But since Venezuelans keep electing him in democratic elections, and he doesn't actually pose any threat to the US - even leaving our huge oil imports unaffected even as Bush/Cheney worked directly to undermine his government - I don't care whether Venezuelans' standards for a democratic republic are different from mine. After all, I lived with Bush/Cheney for 8 long years, and the majority of Americans accepted their tyrannies and incompetence, with a huge and in-play nuke arsenal, so I'm not going to preach to Venezuelans who don't threaten me.

Why, oh, why...

[mevets]

Why do Oil Producing Countries want nuclear bombs? Because they can afford them? Does oil make you paranoid? Maybe Canada should nuke-up to defend the tar sands.....

Re:Why, oh, why...

[shutdown -p now]

Nukes? Hah! Canada has Celine Dion. Pray that more is not unleashed from where that came from!

What nuclear secrets? These.

[Animats]

The big secrets are out. Everybody understands generally how an atomic bomb works. There remain smaller secrets, along the lines of construction tips. Machining plutonium is very difficult; in addition to being radioactive and poisonous, it has weird physical properties - it expands when heated, but doesn't contract fully when cooled, because the crystalline structure changes. The detailed techniques for doing that and compensating for the changes aren't public knowledge. Exactly how plutonium behaves when compressed by a shock wave is still being studied. The tricks by which atomic bombs are made smaller and more efficient are not well known. There are neutron reflectors, tampers, and such. The data from the experimental work to develop those items is still classified.

Developing that data independently requires a sizable research operation. All the big nuclear powers had to build big R&D operations to struggle with those problems. (Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea probably used leaked data from one of the big powers.)

The interesting question with this guy is whether this guy fed the FBI real classified data, or just faked up some plausible design numbers.

Re:What nuclear secrets? These.

[oldmac31310]

jeez, for some reason you make me feel like the OLD Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Déjà vu

[Anonymous Coward]

The corporate states of amerika consider Chevez the enemy. He'll never give away Venezuela's oil. The stage is being set to take Venezuela.

Conspiracy theory you say? Flashback to the eighties. Reagan's special emissary, Donald Rumsfeld, brokered a deal to sell Hussein anthrax and more pathogens. Republicans in congress loopholed the munitions export law with a Commerce act to make it legal. Then they waited to manipulate public opinion (recall the ANTHRAX terrorist(s) targeted the Democratic Senate leadership and certain liberal media outlets). Their pecker tracks were all over the biological evidence, so they stacked the deck with Nuclear and Chemical WMD.

The groundwork is being laid now to take out Chavez. So in the future when a corporate tool is POTUS and needs a boost to their failed administration, we'll see something like Operation Free the Venezuelan Oil. Of course the price of oil will double and billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil will disappear, but all you have to do is drink the kool aid and watch Faux Newz.

Re:Nuclear weapons Venezuela ?

[shutdown -p now]

So that it may have an effective deterrent against any potential U.S. invasion?

Anyway, in this case, Venezuela wasn't really involved. The arrested folk thought they were selling the information there, but in truth there was only FBI agent provocateurs, and nothing more.

if you knew the technology

[circletimessquare]

might be used against someone you love, you would never sell out, at any price

the idea that everyone has a price is a very nihilistic way of looking at the world, and simply isn't true, simply because not everyone is nihilist. some people actually believe in something. now you may ridicule what they believe in, that it has no merit. and you may even be right about their beliefs having no merit. however, that doesn't change the fact they still believe in those things nonetheless. and therefore, they don't have a price, no matter what you promise them

and thankfully such people exist

because when reading your words, i would much rather this world be populated by people who believe in magical sky fairies, even though i myself don't believe in magical sky fairies, than a world populated by someone like you, who doesn't believe in anything at all, and loves no one and no thing, except your own selfish ignorant self. you are an asshole, and without any redeeming qualities as a human being, because of what you wrote above that you believe about your fellow human beings. what you wrote is actually less instructive about your fellow human beings, and much more instructive about how only one person thinks: you. and the way think is known in some circles, as evil. and although such crude terminology is mostly not very useful in understanding one another, i make an exception for you. you suck, asshole, you really do, for what you find acceptable, which is never acceptable, ever

Re:if you knew the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurr durr.

Re:if you knew the technology

[Wandering Idiot]

Hurr durr.

Thank you for that cogent and insightful analysis! Now leave and never come back. 4chan is thataway ->

Re:if you knew the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried reading your posts on occasion, but always give up.
Capital letters (where appropriate). Proper punctuation. Try it. That way, people won't get a head ache after the first dozen words...

Re:if you knew the technology

[khallow]

if you knew the technology might be used against someone you love, you would never sell out, at any price

And what if you knew that the technology probably wouldn't be used against someone you love, and dang, a million bucks is a lot of money. Never underestimate the power of humans to rationalize what they want to get. While there probably are people who won't compromise under any circumstance, a common trick is to present the negotiation in a way that allows the target to rationalize ignoring the downsides.

Re:if you knew the technology

[Thiez]

I think the odds of Venezuela starting a nuclear war with the USA are pretty slim. For a million dollars I'd call it an acceptable risk.

Re:if you knew the technology

[moonbender]

You exaggerate. Capitalization is not very meaningful in English, anyway (unlike, say, in German, where all nouns start with a capital letter). And from what I can see, he does have proper punctuation except in paragraph-final position where a full stop is arguably redundant. I certainly prefer that to people writing without paragraphs -- now that I can't read (I know, strawman, false dichotomy, etc).

Re:if you knew the technology

[ultranova]

the idea that everyone has a price is a very nihilistic way of looking at the world, and simply isn't true, simply because not everyone is nihilist. some people actually believe in something.

Everyone has a price, however that doesn't mean that any amount of money would be sufficient (since having 2 millions isn't worth twice having one million); but suppose the price is the safety of your loved ones? And believing in something in no way contradicts selling US nuclear secrets. In what, with suitable believes, such a course of action might be one you can't avoid and stay true to them.

because when reading your words, i would much rather this world be populated by people who believe in magical sky fairies, even though i myself don't believe in magical sky fairies, than a world populated by someone like you, who doesn't believe in anything at all, and loves no one and no thing, except your own selfish ignorant self.

This is completely nonsensical. Why on Earth do you think that someone believing in a "sky fairy" would be loyal to the US? And why do you think that not being loyal to the US - or any other country, for that matter - means you don't love anyone or anything?

Re:if you knew the technology

[JWSmythe]

I wasn't really commenting on myself. I was commenting on people in general. Myself, my price is impossibly high, and would likely involve a failure to deliver the information.

    It's pretty easy to talk about what we'd do, when the situation is never presented to us.

    I have been presented with the opportunity to do some "bad things" with large quantities of sensitive information, but never military grade information. I've always chosen the moral high ground, because I'm the one who has to live with my decisions. I've also never possessed such secrets, so the situation has never presented itself in reality to me. Knowing how many people are, they'd likely go for the cash, and not worry about the consequences.

    In this situation, they were to be leaking sensitive information to Venezuela. Most people would see it and say "what harm could come of that?" They're not very likely to attack the United States with such a weapon. If such a weapon was used, it would no result in any sort of injury to anyone I know. I do believe that there are too many countries with nuclear capabilities or are seeking such capabilities. I'd prefer the number be much closer to zero.

    You can believe in magical sky fairies. That doesn't mean that there aren't quite a few people who would sell out for the right price, nor does it mean there's a lack of people who would be more than happy to pay for it.

Re:if you knew the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've sold the secrets to Venezuela, there's not a lot stopping Venezuela from selling it on to someone more likely to fling nukes around. Or if Venezuela's security arrangements are less effective than Americas, Americas enemies could steal it from Venezuela if they lack the skill or resources to steal it from America.

You are confused

[aepervius]

The critical mass is the MINIMUM amount of material needed for sustained nuclear reaction. A sub critical mass could not have aa sustaained reacation. So no, the USAA is *not* doing mini bomb with sub critical mass. On the other hand the critical mass for Pu is around 10 Kg (10 cm diameter sphere), and uranium 50 Kg (around 20 cm diameter sphere). Even counting that you have to hollow the sphere to not start reacting early and spending your material uselessly, a 30 cm sphere goes well into some of the biggest amazon package. Use well timed explosive lens, a neutron source, coat in Berillyum or some type of neutron reflecting coating and you are set for a first stage bomb low yield. Naturally this would be small yield, but enough to raze most of the governement building around the world in one split second.

A low yield bomb is an engineering problem not a complex one. Where it come to be complex and where the various governement keep their secret, is when you want a much bigger yield, say multi hundred kiloton, or multi hundred megaton. That is where a multi stage bomb is to be used, eventually with nuclear fission. How to make the second stage work and ignite in time to feed the third stage is much more complicated. And needs a lot of research.


So basically I think that a very low yield nuke is already feasible with available material for an engineer or physicist. And those one could be put in a car , package, coffer. But what interrest foreign governement are the multi stage high yield/efficient one whicvh can be delivered remotely at precise location.

Life in Prison!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Nazi Germany they would have been executed on the spot! The USA is so weak.

Take off, you hosehead!

[LazLong]

Sorry, no, Canada can build nuclear reactors, but you don't have the infrastructure to build "weapons" beyond the primitive enriched-uranium critical mass gun type like Little Boy that was used on Hiroshima. As Canada has no ballistic missile industry, this weapon would have to be delivered in the same way as Little Boy.

For Canada to build a nuclear weapon equivalent to Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki, it would have to build a reprocessing facility. This facility would be used to reprocess spent fuel from Canada's CANDU reactors to 'harvest' the pu-235 that is a natural byproduct of the fission process used in these reactors. Then pu-235 processing facilities would have to be built to create the pu-235 parts of the weapon.

By the time this happened, Canada would be in such debt that it would have to rid itself of its national health care system, and would be in the same pathetic situation that we in the U.S. currently are. We've got tons of nuclear weapons, but we can't seem to be able to provide a proper health care system for all of our citizens.

OK, maybe that last paragraph is a bit of an exaggeration. My main point is that Canada doesn't have what it needs to build a deployable nuclear weapon (given that Fat Man and Little Boy were both experimental devices and not properly weaponized) in "a very short time frame." Unless you define "a very short time frame" to be on the order of a decade. In any case, WHY would Canada want to build nuclear weapons? Canada would be MUCH better off spending its energy (no pun intended) on developing an export market for it's reactor know-how and convincing countries to adopt them as a means to get off non-renewable energy.

+1 to the Canadians for not being foolishly afraid of nuclear energy like their moronic neighbors to the south.

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[Spotticus]

As one of the worlds largest producers of medical isotopes, Canada has much of the needed infrastructure to produce Pu-239 should it really want to. The NRU reactor at Chalk River would simply need to switch out its Molybdum targets for Uranium and we'd be in business. All of the reprocessing facilities are in place (currently processing medical isotopes). As well, the CANDU reactor design, for a civilian reactor, is quite capable of producing high quality Pu-239 with minor modifications since it can be refueled while operating (as India has done with its CIRUS reactor). Most civilian reactors have to be shutdown to extract the U-238 slugs (that breed the Pu-239) to either you run them for a while (and contaminate your Pu-239 with Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242) or you're firing them up and shutting them down every few weeks. Tritium boosting and a berillium reflector would allow you to build a small enough device to carry on a CF-18. So if it really came down to it, Canada could probably build a couple of bombs in less than a year for a few hundred million, of course there is little reason for us to do so. Just remember the Northwest Passage is Canadian terittorial waters and the North Pole is ours :o)

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[Tweenk]

his facility would be used to reprocess spent fuel from Canada's CANDU reactors to 'harvest' the pu-235 that is a natural byproduct of the fission process used in these reactors.

It's Pu-239. You are confusing with U-235.

Canada would be MUCH better off spending its energy (no pun intended) on developing an export market for it's reactor know-how and convincing countries to adopt them as a means to get off non-renewable energy.

That's kind of what they do, and the CANDU is used in China, Romania, South Korea, India and a few other countries.

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[LazLong]

Hurm. OK. I was sleepy when I posted. No excuse really, as I know Canada produces a metric ass-load of medical isotopes. As opposed to an imperial ass-load, which is much smaller, less than half that of a metric ass-load. Anyway, I digress. I agree, the same infrastructure could be used to extract pu-239.

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[LazLong]

Yeah, sleepy. It was 0504 and I hadn't slept yet.

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[sznupi]

And perhaps most of that infrastructure is even in Quebec?

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[Mashiki]

And perhaps most of that infrastructure is even in Quebec?

No most of it is in Ontario, up Ottawa way, and along the great lakes. Although there is a civilian breeder reactor in Toronto(university).

Re:Take off, you hosehead!

[sznupi]

Meh, I'm slightly dissapointed - though otoh France should readily provide them with nukes after secession ;) (or perhaps they have something fun of different kind already?)

Cyclotrons &/or Hydrogen Fusion Implosion meth

[Anonymous Coward]

"All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material. All nuclear explosions are accomplished by achieving criticality in some fission material" - by IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
on Friday September 17, @10:51PM (#33617278)

Per my subject line above? Fusion bombs (hydrogen) actually utilize an implosion (in the 'end' @ least), but use explosions, first (atomic fission bombs detonating in a sphere around a hydrogen mass, to fuse)...

So, in a way?

Well - Even fusion blasts from H-Bombs require EXPLOSIONS for their fuseable mass fusion to "go down", too, and the end result can be an explosion (via the H-Bomb example thereof, which is, afaik @ least - so correct me if I am off here or out of date/stale, the ONLY practical lost-cost use of fusion thusfar).

You also didn't note how to achieve that critical mass though (Cyclotrons, iirc? By firing electrons into an unstable mass like U238 etc./et al (enriched nuke blast fuel basically)) either.

Other than that, You chose your words well enough, specifically in 'explosions' though. It saved your behind because it's correct afaik at least on that account. Do think about it though: Even H-Bomb Fusion blasts need explosions first, to achieve fusion (afaik, again, correct me if I am off here - I may be stale/out-of-date or even misinformed on some accounts here).

Secrets?

[oldmac31310]

I have difficulty understanding what could be so amazingly new, different and ground breaking that the US has it and other countries do not. Seems like comic book stuff to me. I would really like to know. Maybe US can haz flying car, space elevator and invisibility cloak and will not allow others to share the Hogwarts magick. Maybe Venezuela doesn't know this or doesn't have the friggin' internet. What can be so exotic and esoteric that is not known? Perhaps I'm am naive and in actuality xMen stuff is REAL!

Re:Cyclotrons &/or Hydrogen Fusion Implosion m

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That is correct, as far as I know, there has not been a nuclear weapon manufactured that did not need a traditional fission-based nuclear explosion as at least an initial stage. All other methods to initiate fusion are so far impractical to be deployed as weapon systems due the mass and size of the equipment required and amounts of electrical power needed.

Rightwing Nuclear Deterrent

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the rightwing rhetoric of 40 years ago is true, then wouldn't nuclear deterrent work best if ALL nations had nuclear weapons and are ready to use them at a moments notice? Just think how good diplomacy would have to be under those conditions!

America has grown soft

[l0ungeb0y]

Life in prison for giving secrets to nations with strong anti-American sentiments?
There was a day this would call for the Death Penalty.

YRO?

[karlzt]

why this is on your rights online?

1980's / 2010's

[AlpineR]

What's a "pinball machine"?

Read again, Duke Of Ignorville

[SuperKendall]

There seems to be one just above...

You mean the guy who was telling you what he THOUGHT the argument was? The argument that in fact was not directed against any race specifically, mentioning only citizens (some of which are Mexican thanks to dual citizenship)?

Looks like you're gonna need a bigger mirror!

Re:Read again, Duke Of Ignorville

[sznupi]

Looks like you have a problem keeping up with the discussion / differentiating posters. Hm, what could that potentially tell about your analysis of what they say/etc....

(also, limiting rights to "citizens" is exactly at the core of the issue here)

Re:Read again, Duke Of Ignorville

[SuperKendall]

Looks like you have a problem keeping up with the discussion / differentiating posters

Odd, you don't say how. Is it because you are too stupid to understand what I wrote in relation to your own link? Empirical evidence, and the magic 8-ball, all point to yes!

I'll let you have the last response since really at this point your thought are not worth reading, much less replying to. It's like trying to explain to Eliza the sky really is blue...

Re:Read again, Duke Of Ignorville

[sznupi]

Oh, just pretending now you didn't try to directly continue with me a talk you had with another poster; if only you took to heart things you suggested others few times...

(well, assuming you're at least pretending... But then, that again touches on how typical is being convinced in one's choices of people, and more, being above average)

I knew the guy 30 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I was student at Austin when he was a research associate in the fusion group. He was encouraged to leave because he wanted to research his own grand ideas rather than work on the project that funded his paycheck. He went to Los Alamos and ran into the same problem.

I doubt that anything Leo came up with was realizable. Good at theory but quite impractical.

Re:Venezuela - Heroes, not traitors

[Anonymous Coward]

These people are heroes, not traitors. The real traitors are people like you who bend over for the government.

Re:Venezuela - Heroes, not traitors

[Doc Ruby]

Proliferating nukes is for traitors to all humanity. No proliferation makes anyone safer, and each new proliferation makes us exponentially more in danger. People who give their country's secrets to other countries, especially when that makes their fellow citizens more in danger, are traitors to their country.

You, Anonymous gibberish Coward, are bending over for insanity.

so what....

[hesaigo999ca]

How were they able to get passed our supper duper high tech security systems and screening, especially our
advanced profiling , we put a lot of energy in coming up with such advanced systems.

On a serious note, I am a bit confused how this could happen, I thought a lot of the nuclear stuff was being outsourced to private companies, and that they had extreme measures of security much more advanced then what the government could come up with.

After watching that movie with Mel Gibson, I tend to think that these companies go further then the government ever could because of the lines the government just cant cross...sometimes almost sad, in some cases the government wont step in when it should...
(ie- take away a pedophile and send a clear message of "do this, and you disappear".....) and when we wonder why they are getting involved at all when they should just stay clear of it....like gay marriages, if they want to get married, let them, if someone wants to spend major cash to marry his BMW car...who cares...let the poor sap tie the knot with an inanimate object.