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Buying Goods To Make Nuclear Weapons On eBay, Alibaba, and Other Platforms
Lasrick (2629253) writes The blossoming of online Internet-trading platforms has at least one downside: insufficient inspectors and product controls when it comes to goods relevant to nuclear proliferation. "On Alibaba (and other platforms), one can purchase many of the specialized items needed for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. A short list of items advertised for sale on the site include metals suitable for centrifuge manufacturing, gauges and pumps for centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment, metallurgical casting equipment suitable for making nuclear weapon 'pits,' and high-speed cameras suitable for use in nuclear weapon diagnostic tests. A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium, which the seller trumpeted could be used to stabilize plutonium." Although many companies have strict compliance procedures in place to help avoid proliferation, many do not. There are several procedures these platforms can put into place to minimize risk, and both national (and international) regulators have a role to play, as well as shareholders.
Why no booms?
NOT making nuclear weapons...
the food eaten by the people working on making nuclear bombs is an item that can lead to proliferation. This is just scare-mongering to increase inspection of incoming parcels... so the government can charge import duties and taxes.
Oh, and we're protecting you from people who build nuclear bombs in their garage, yup.
What nonsense.
Mostly random stuff.
Why stop it?
Getting the government involved in regulating the site to preemptively prevent these transactions is stupid. Instead there should be a streamlined process for getting a warrant, and then you go after people who purchase the material. While mailing them a large cache of something that looks like the product but isn't and that has a locator.
If you ban the sale altogether you just push it underground. If you use it to gather data you have actionable intelligence.
If you're a nuclear scientist or engineer, your activities are more closely watched than anyone else's save the president of your country.
Kim Kardashian is President?
Gallium is used a lot in semiconductor manufacture and I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to get.
Hell, a Google search for "pure gallium" has pulled up quite a few prospects.
You'd have a much harder time getting a hold of the plutonium.
problem is, almost everything has the potential for dual-use. thorium for tube filaments for audiophools and ham radio power tubes. plutonium for.... yeah, that's it, degradation deep-space power modules, right. there might be room for a law to allow the customs boys to bring you questionable materials, and inspect the delivery address... .
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Sarah Palin came close.
Just because it's your worst nightmare doesn't mean you should discount the possibility completely.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It is the only way we will ever be safe.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well yea Gallium can be used to stabilise Pu, it is after all a potent neutron absorber....
This is not a metal you want anywhere near your fissile core.
Kind of cool stuff however, it melts right around body heat, so amusing to play with, but as a nuclear material its major use is preventing big piles of corium from accidents from going critical.
An interesting obsevation about the black market as applied to nuclear matters: If I have some Pu for sale I stand about an 80% chance that any given attempt to close a deal will result in a swat team and men from the intellegence services wanting a word.
The same thing applies if I am a buyer, no effective market can exist under these conditions.
However, given that presumably everyones intel agencies run stings of both types the result must surely be that much of the time you get two intellegence agencies swatting each other....
Now the ready availibility of copper vapour lasers and narrow line width dyes, that might actually be a worry (There is approximately a 0.5nm difference in the photon energy required to ionise U235 compared to U238 as a hexafloride, this is explotable at least in experimental plants), 1950s tech not so much (There are probably easier ways to get there these days).
Regards, Dan.
So Chinese manufactures sell materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs and it goes unchecked. Are we supposed to be surprised or scared into giving up more liberties in the name of a false sense of security?
Millions of uranium centrifuge parts sold openly:
http://www.alibaba.com/country...
Somebody call Colin Powell!
time to background check people who buy golf balls and have TSA at driving rage.
The technology to actually manufacture nuclear weapons is starting to close in on a century old. What prohibits their manufacture is ultimately a combination of international pressure, expense, and engineering difficulty. If your country doesn't have a bullet train then it probably doesn't have nuclear weapons for much the same reason or else because it has specifically chosen not to manufacture them (the fact any money from western nations would quickly evaporate makes a strong incentive). If you're going to worry about people getting hold of galium and high speed cameras, you're just being ridiculous. Anyone who could even have a shot at building a nuclear weapon also has enough resources to easily obtain those sorts of items, no matter what international restrictions are applied.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Sorry, this is pretty much BS scaremongering.
Buying a piece of metal that could be made into a centrifuge doesn't mean that you will actually succeed to make one. There is a lot of specialized equipment needed for that which is tightly controlled (try to export a high precision CNC machine, for example!).
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay - they would be spending a ton of money for a product of unknown quality possibly from a mom&pop shop somewhere in China that sells everything from rubber bands, dresses up to car accessories, that is assuming it isn't a scam in the first place. There are better ways of obtaining it - e.g. through shell companies abroad acting as middlemen to avoid embargoes or from friendly nations.
And before someone pulls out the "terrorist building nukes" bogeyman - that requires a lot more than building a few centrifuges from stuff bought on Alibaba. There are plenty of simpler, cheaper and easier accessible methods to wreak havoc than trying to build a nuke that even countries like Iran didn't succeed in so far, despite vastly bigger resources than some lunatics in a cave possess.
... and there are other more dangerous sites.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Let's clearly separate the cases
a) You are an institution which is powerful/rich enough to build (AFAIU they were talking about the raw metals here) operate a isotope enrichment plant, breeder reactors, and compose these to a *working* nuclear device (Ahem even countries like North Korea or Iran take a while for this): It's very likely that you were able to contact sellers of these required equipment without the internet (and doing so via the internet may get you on a list of the NSA to watch)
b) You are a terrorist organisation with a moderate amount (~0.5-1B Dollar), but no backing infrastructure: Good luck in powering up the centrifuges without anybody noticing; you have to buy the plutonium directly.
Now!
Stones used in stonings in Iran.
We old (in)continentler (european) stopped delivering sodiompenthatol to the U.S. because of its use in executions.
Stop delivering stones to Iran.
The funny thing about nuclear weapons is.
You need the fucking key ingredient!
Uran or Plutonium
And yes when you have that you can enrich it!
But when I remember correctly the Uranium content of the best ton of uranium ore was about 0,3%.
And the amount of centrifuges to increase the concentration is enormous.
Now you need to put that Caterpiller Truck also on the list.
No fucking idiot without a big organisation can do that.
We should track lathe and mill buyers first, because these are the tools weapons of person destruction are built off.
We arrange all our 'special' purchases over a secure p>p network and pay in bitcoin.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Not unless you live in the US or have a shit ton of cash. The only affordable real* high speed camera on the market right now is the Edgertronic who has a strict "will not sell to anyone outside of the US" policy. I know because I tried to get one into Canada directly and through 3 different HS camera vendors, they all refused to even try to import but offered to sell me low resolution 500fps toys for 10-20grand.
*before some one says 'iPhone' 240fps is no where near "high speed," under 1Kfps really doesn't get you much detail for anything other than sports and wildlife.
Why are people so busy trying to kill each other?
Video games.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I can go down the street to Walmart and Lowes, and for under $100, buy materials to seed my yard with OMG !! landmines. Probably won't kill you, but it will slow you down.
Should we close those stores as well?
(well, probably, but not for those reasons)
A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium
Oh no! Not the "rare metal" gallium!
How could something so dangerous and rare be sold to the general public?
Code name, Amazon Prime
http://www.amazon.com/Gallium-99-99%25-Pure-20-Grams/dp/B00BSRAH5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414958244&sr=8-1&keywords=gallium
I used it to make a novelty heart, which melted in her hands.
Most of this gear has lots of legitimate uses as well. Not to mention that if someone really wanted to obtain this sort of gear, I cannot imagine them shopping for it on Alibaba or eBay.[...]
I'm trying to become a rationalist, so here's (my take on) the fallacy.
Police learn that "all drug labs use chemicals", so they think "all chemicals are intent to make drugs". If they see your home laboratory, you'll be arrested and have all your chemicals confiscated - even if you don't have the complete drug-making kit. I know of one home lab where this is exactly what happened. Frequently, having a scale is considered sufficient evidence of drug dealing.
I've read several news reports of people being arrested for having "bomb making materials" where the kit was incomplete - in one case a box of [glass] canning jars in the back of a vehicle along with a bag of fertilizer. No fuel oil (for ANFO), nothing that could be a fuse, no apparent intent, and no apparent target. A guy's life got completely fucked up for no apparent reason.
Another example: explosives are delivered by rocket, so rockets will be used to deliver explosives. We have to ban model rocketry!
Sexual harassment is done by ribald speech, therefore all ribald speech is sexual harassment. (Even if there's no threat?)
Other examples too numerous to mention.
This is formally the Fallacy of the Reversed Conditional, and it's used in lots and lots of news articles to stoke fear and promote the writer's agenda.
It's a problem in Bayesian probability. Consider whether the following reversals are valid or invalid:
Probability that someone carries a purse, given that they're a woman (high or low), probability that someone is a woman, given that they're carrying a purse (high or low)? Is reversing this conditional valid?
Probability that John is dead, given that he was executed (high or low), probability that John was executed, given that he is dead (high or low)? Is reversing the conditional valid?
Two examples of reversed the conditionals, but only one is valid when reversed.
We need to sort through the bias and clever manipulation of innuendo, and consider the arguments on their merits. Owning any of the cited tech is not evidence of bomb-making, and invasive tracking laws will not help stop nuclear proliferation.
The fallacy is used for a reason: they want to impose invasive tracking for other reasons, using your emotions against you.
Don't be fooled.
Christ, Iran already has the fissionable material and the fucking centrifuges and still hasn't produced a weapon. We're really worried about somebody buying shit on eBay and making it in their basement?
She must be a nucular scientist.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
If Sarah Palin is your worst nightmare, you have pretty tame nightmares.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Gallium causes almost all metals to corrode on contact.
Mostly just Aluminum. It also forms room temperature eutectics with other metals, but that's the only commonly used one.
On a related note, it's illegal to bring gallium onto an airplane, due to corrosion concerns.
Shit. You can get all that at Harbor Freight!
As I said....
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Parts and Supplies for the next babies boomers' generation"
Achille Talon
Hop!
How much is stuff set up to fail by three letter agencies in US/UK? And contrary to popular scare mongering, making a nuke is not easy, even a simple gun type assembly. Delivering it to the target is a another very large hurdle. For those interested, I do recommend this book
country? any individual person is more like it.
uranium isotopes are too hard. just convert u238 into pu239 with fast neutrons from a fusor. all it takes it electricity and time, and then you can separate the fissile from the matrix chemically, which is much easier.
making a fission bomb is incredibly easy, once you have enough pu239. i mean it is century-old physics, achievable with your great-grandfather's technology. c'mon.
it is a lot of electric however. i recommend investing in a hydro station.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Arrest him!
Why? It's only copper!
OK... wait, is that tin over there! EXECUTE THE CRIMINAL SCUM! He could make bronze weapons with those!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
All those items and materials have legions of legitimate uses in science and manufacturing; only an ignoramus would accept the absurd allegations of summary or article.
Design flaw(s).
Mostly random stuff.
hahaha: no, your homemade fusor will never output sufficent neutrons to change any amount of metal you could weigh on a scale
You mean, like is combined with arsenic (a deadly poison) to use for all sorts of evil things like LEDs and high speed transistors for things like cell phones?
And you can combine it with that nitrogen stuff that is part of so many explosives. And use it for (wait for it) even brighter LEDs!
Wow. That's some real exotic stuff there. Certainly wouldn't want any of that in the world.
Yeah, this is the sort of BS I'd expect out of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It's sad they've figured out that submitting everything to Slashdot is a way to shovel their message.
US support through their shills is plenty enough. Ask Holland, Israel and Pakistan, in any order.
The level of stupid in the world is astounding.
... all I got was a shiny bomb case full of pinball machine parts.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Get you a meth lab charge nowadays. Used to buy potassium nitrate and permanganate in pound canisters from the local druggist too.
KMn04 and glycerin are hypergolic, BTW.
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While we all love our polonium encrusted static master brushes, americium drenched smoke detectors, tritium and radium enhanced time pieces... what I really want for Christmas this year are a matching pair of plutonium powered hand-warmers.
None of this boiling water to recharge leaky sodium acetate bags made by the lowest bidder, intentionally throwing our smartphones into thermal overload or the mess left behind by paper envelopes filled with iron filings.
Not only do plutonium hand warmers guarantee many years of gentle continuous warmth none of your friends will hassle you to borrow them.
Bought stuff on Alibaba. Mostly radio gear. But the prices cannot be beat. I've even bought electronic components on there.
I'm still in university, and I might want to do grad work in semiconductors. I hope I don't need special permissions to get a hold of gallium, which is a pretty innocuous material (unless you're an aluminum can).
The problem with nukes is one of usefulness. As you say using safe material to make something useful is very hard to do. Using unsafe material is difficult to use because it is so unsafe.
Like TNT... its technological advance wasn't explosive force, but rather safe handling. Nitroglycerin which was used prior, made a good boom, but it was usually the guy with the short straw that got to deploy the stuff.
Like the theft (unintentional or not) of a radioactive material a little while ago, not sure if they ever caught the guys, but authorities expected that they would all be dead in about 3 days anyway after exposure.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2...
I guest that explains the spam I get for fully refurbished copper from the D.R.C. ?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
hahaha. try surviving 30 seconds in the neutron flux output from 100 megawatts of hydro.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-