Nuclear Warhead Blueprints On Smugglers' Computers

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

Garage Nukes

[Tablizer (95088)]

Let's face it, the Nuclear Cat is slowly crawling out of the bag and will no longer be containable soon. We need to develop better nuke-detection and interception technology or we will be doomed by rogue garage nukes and missiles.
           

Re:Garage Nukes

[QuantumG (50515)]

We need better protection against theoretically impossible threats - like backpack nukes.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Cyberax (705495)]

??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition [wikipedia.org] are very much real.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Ours (596171)]

What the article doesn't say it that thing weights 70 kilos more or less. You won't pass for a tourist carrying one of these with a "buddy" helping you carry it.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Cyberax (705495)]

70kg is a reasonable weight for your baggage. Too much for airplanes (where it also needs to be weighted and so on), but not a problem if you move by train or car.

You can also move it in a diplomatic baggage if you are acting as an official of a 'rogue state'.

Re:Garage Nukes

[jacquesm (154384)]

All it takes is a buddy in the luggage handling section.

Airports are so leaky it isn't even funny, all the window dressing with 'passenger screening' up front is just to reassure you, it doesn't make you any more safe.

Think about it, multiple millions of tons of stuff moves in / out a major airport every day, there is just simply no way to manually inspect each and every bit. Added to that the fact that usually there is major construction going on because of expansion and remodeling, which causes security measures to be changed all the time.

And 70 Kg in your hand luggage may seem like a lot, but on a baggage trolley it's very little and once you're in the airport you could do a serious amount of damage blowing it to bits right there and then. The combination of suicide attacks coupled with small nukes would be pretty effective.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Shakrai (717556)]

All it takes is a buddy in the luggage handling section.

Airports are so leaky it isn't even funny

This is frighteningly accurate. Quick story:

Coming back from Florence about a year ago. Post 9/11 world. American Airlines loses my luggage. Takes four weeks for them to locate it. They claim to have finally found it and say it will be on a flight heading into the local airport the next day.

I head up to the airport to see if they actually found it. A buddy of mine works as an operations manager at the local airport. Of course my luggage doesn't show up -- but he takes me on a behind the scenes tour of the airport while we wait. We walk right past the TSA guys (one of whom is sleeping -- it's a small regional airport and there were no arrivals or departures going on at this time), right through the metal detector -- setting it off in the process -- yet none of them stopped us or even looked up! They've never seen me before and have only the word of my friend that I have no ill intentions.

So you can walk right out onto the tarmac with the planes if you happen to know the right person -- no security/background check required -- but you can't bring more than 3oz of breast milk onto your flight. Does anybody else see how stupid that is?

Re:Garage Nukes

[capnkr (1153623)]

Well, look at it this way:

1) It's a small airport, people know each other, and it's easier to see something or someone that would be unusual. Had you *not* been with your friend, much trouble would have ensued when you set off that alarm, heading out onto the tarmac.
2) You are in the presence of the operations manager. He's told *someone* who you are, and why you are there. Perhaps that has been checked out, or they were already aware of it. (Your words:"...have only the word of my friend that I have no ill intentions." imply he has told someone who you are...)
3) You didn't see them look up when you went thru the detector, but I'd wager they'd looked already, saw him, and that's why they exhibited no reaction *that you could detect* to an alarm going off.
4) You aren't carrying any baggage or other object which could be used to hide/carry explosives/weapons. You probably aren't going to destroy an entire airliner and/or kill everyone aboard it with your bare hands (after all, they can see that you aren't Chuck Norris or Bruce Schneier ;) ).

I don't think that this compares to you boarding a flight at a major airport along with several hundred other souls, the same as any anonymous stranger. It does show a lack of probable "proper procedure" and likely lax attitudes at your local airport, but what does (fill in name of terrorist organization here) care about blowing up a little airport? They would get some headlines, but for the effort, a better target would be selected, one which would likely further their objectives.

Also, were I one of their planners, I would leave the 'little' airports alone. That helps ensure an easier-going mindset out 'in the sticks', which could be helpful when moving terror agents around...

The breast milk type stuff is stupid enough on it's own, and largely the "security" measures that are all-too rampant in this country the past few years are for show IMO, but I don't think that this story you relate is highly illustrative of that, necessarily.

Just saying... :)

Re:Garage Nukes

[dgm3574 (153548)]

"you can't bring more than 3oz of breast milk onto your flight."

You can bring as much as you like, as long as it's in the original container.

Re:Garage Nukes

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

"brown people" is the absolute broadest description you could give to security when they ask "who should i keep an eye on?" like i said before this is not racism, this is filtering.

No, it's racism.

Not only that, but it's horrible security to boot. There are plenty of crazy white people to go around, all some terrorist group would have to do would be to recruit some crazy white dudes and they're set, because security doesn't pay any real attention.

Re:Garage Nukes

[jacquesm (154384)]

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

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[QuantumG (50515)]

I pointed out that "mini-nukes" do exist. They can be even used as 'backpack bombs'. Small nuclear munitions can be used to level cities.

No they can't. That's the point. If you can't understand that a 1kt weapon isn't sufficient to level a city then how can I go about convincing you that you hold an irrational belief? Do I have to give you a "10 million pages of congress" style analogy?

It's a kt.. you can pick up the ingredients to make a 1kt bomb from home depot. You won't need a team of nuclear scientists to do it, either.

If you want to level a city, you need at least 10s of kilotons and you need to detonate it at an altitude of about 2,000ft. And even then, you'd only be punching a hole in Manhattan, you'd need a 100kt bomb to level it.

A guy with a backpack bomb on, would likely only be able to carry about a 0.1kt bomb and detonating it at ground level would cause less damage than the Oklahoma City bombing.. and for that kind of bang there's cheaper ways to spend your bucks.

The whole "OMG Backpack Nuke!" hysteria is just a reflection of how poorly the average person understands anything with the word "nuclear" in it and immediately fears it.

You should know better.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Hijacked Public (999535)]

And based on those same principles, must be less than nothing preventing a terrorist from using Ebola, since he could fit enough in his shirt pocket to kill as many people as a backpack full of nuclear bomb.

The reality of nuclear weapons (and biological ones alluded to above) is that while it is technically possible to make one it is exceedingly difficult. And I don't mean 'kids today don't know how to solder' difficult. Entire countries spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fake the possibility that they might have the theoretical capability to build a low yield device, because actually building one would cost hundreds of billions. The idea that a terrorist group could do it on their own is preposterous. Doubly so considering the actual geographic footprint the facilities they'd have to build have.

Of course there is still the possibility that they could steal one from the few places that actually have them. That can't be proven false, or even nearly as hard as building one from scratch, but based on the fact that no one has done it yet it must be pretty damn hard. I was in Afghanistan 3 years ago and most of the roadside bombs were gunpowder and shrapnel. I'm told by people who are there now that this is the case in Iraq as well. A bomb like this is many many levels less sophisticated than even the typical HE bombs the Army uses to clear obstacles in roads and even with their Swiss cheese stockpile guarding you don't see their shit for sale on every street corner.

None of this means nuclear proliferation shouldn't be policed. It does mean that actively fretting over backpack nukes is silly.

Re:Garage Nukes

[SnowZero (92219)]

sorry buddy, QuantumG is correct. There's this thing called critical mass, see.. and the geometry has to maximize contact between the various (very, ridiculously expensive, even by national standards) globs of enriched uranium.

Uranium hasn't been the material of choice since the 1940s. If you use plutonium, you would only need a 10kg, 10cm diameter sphere [wikipedia.org]. With modern high explosive detonation you will need even slightly less, since the shockwave compression is what makes the fissile mass go supercritical.

It's probably possible to make one that can fit in a small car easily, but not possible to make a suitcase/backpack nuke. And certainly not one the size of a soccer ball.

How about an elongated soccer ball [wikipedia.org]?

That said, there's a lot of things I fear way more than a backpack nuke as modern-city-life-ending threats, such as ebola[1]. Even those "more likely" threats are remote, and the nuke attack is more movie plot than reality. However, it is not correct to say a man-portable nuke is not possible, when they have already existed for some time. Do you also not believe in weaponized smallpox?

[1] Ebola in different forms has been airborne (Virginia outbreak between monkeys) or highly fatal to humans (most other outbreaks). It's only a matter of time before a strain manages both.

Re:Garage Nukes

[GreyyGuy (91753)]

That is an interesting point. The idea that a small nuke would not be able to completely destroy a city is not one I had considered. The problem is that it might not "level" a city, but it would cause radiation and likely structure damage to much of it. Plus, can you realistically see anyone wanting to live in that city after a portion of it was destroyed with a small nuke? It might not physically destroy an entire city, but it would certainly psychologically destroy it.

Re:Garage Nukes

[El Jynx (548908)]

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[RAMMS+EIN (578166)]

See, that's insightful. If we take away our enemies' incentive to fight us, we will be safer. I'm glad you actually got modded up for saying it, rather than modded to -1 and buried under "boohooo you're letting the terrorists win" replies. That's not what it's about. It's not about giving in to our enemies, it's about preventing people from becoming our enemies in the first place.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Stanislav_J (947290)]

See, that's insightful. If we take away our enemies' incentive to fight us, we will be safer. I'm glad you actually got modded up for saying it, rather than modded to -1 and buried under "boohooo you're letting the terrorists win" replies. That's not what it's about. It's not about giving in to our enemies, it's about preventing people from becoming our enemies in the first place.

You are obviously too mature, perceptive, and reasonable to be on Slashdot. Please leave immediately, before you ruin the site's reputation.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Chrisq (894406)]

So what will you do when someone demands that you follow their religion? When they demand that you force your women to cover themselves? Demand that homosexuals be put to death?

Fight for their right to say it?
Or take the UK option, and place the entire population under surveillance.

Re:Garage Nukes

[by Anonymous Coward]

> So what will you do when someone demands that you follow their religion?

You mean, like Christian missionaries did ?

> When they demand that you force your women to cover themselves?

Oh, yeah, just like Christian missionaries did

> there are people who hate you just for who you are

7 years passed since sept 2001 and you still haven't got a clue. They don't hate us for what we are, they hate us for what we've done to them. Read some history books. Read Iran's shah history. Read afghanistan history. Read about the ties between saddam and the CIA. Learn that bin laden was a cia agent. Learn how petroleum empires were built, by whom, and with whose blood.

Those people don't "hate our freedom", that is 100% bullshit. The fucking HATE WHAT WE DID TO THEM. And after 100 thousands of civilian death in Iraq plus new huge american bases over there, THEY WILL HATE US EVEN MORE. With a reason.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Fieryphoenix (1161565)]

But a Golden Age only lasts ten turns!

Re:Garage Nukes

[mikael_j (106439)]

The knowledge on how to build a nuke is by no means much of a secret. Yes, the design for more recent fusion-based and otherwise advanced nuclear weapons is surrounded by a lot of hush-hush but a simple fission-based nuke could probably be designed and built by students from any university engineering department, the theory behind it is available in most libraries, as is the basic design of some of the earlier nuclear weapons.

What is hard to get a hold of is the fissible material needed to manufacture a working bomb.

/Mikael

Re:Garage Nukes

[fbjon (692006)]

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[mikael_j (106439)]

Well, I don't want to sound like a fearmonger but compact isn't much of a problem as long as your definition of compact is "smaller than a freight container". Reliability might be a bit harder for your average garage nuke to have though...

/Mikael

Freight container is exactly right!

[Terje Mathisen (128806)]

Any bomb that fits easily into a standard freight container is already a horrible nightmare:

These containers travel worldwide, are rarely inspected if the paperwork seems to be OK, and they can easily stay in a harbor area of a major city for many months.

The only trigger you need is a cell phone, so you can preplace them wherever you like and blow up any coastal city in the world, whenever you want to.

Stopping this scenario is probably (or should be) the real nightmare for most of the three-letter agencies in the world.

Terje

Re:Freight container is exactly right!

[Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358)]

Checkpoints fail to detect uranium in cargo containers [go.com] in two separate tests a year apart.

(There's some argument about whether U-235 would have been detected by equipment that missed the U-238).

Re:Garage Nukes

[Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358)]

The knowledge of how to build one small and light enough to fit on top of a missile is still closely held. That's the key point of this story, that a design was out there which a country with a missile program could use.

Re:Garage Nukes

[siddesu (698447)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"the weapons are out of reach of mostly every state, and those countries who make them profit very little from having them per se"

Funny how India suddenly respected Pakistan when Pakistan demonstrated they could also make nukes.

Garage nuke ? You probably mean GNUke !

[erlehmann (1045500)]

GNUke is an sophisticated and compact nuclear warhead - and more. At its core is are two pieces of piece of sub-critical material that can be combined into a supercritical mass for civil and military use alike.

GNUke is a GNU project which is similar to the Little Boy Bomb which was developed at Manhattan Project Laboratories by J. Robert Oppenheimer and colleagues. It can be considered as a different implementation of Litte Boy. There are some important differences, but much destruction wreaked through Little Boy can be achieved unaltered with GNUke.

One of GNUke's strengths is the ease with which well-produced fission-quality material can be included. Great care has been taken over the defaults for the minor design choices in the nuclear fission process, but the user retains full control.

GNUke blueprints are available as Free Documentation under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Free Documentation License in source code form. It can easily be set up and functions on a wide variety of launch vehicles and similar systems (including B-29 Superfortresses and ICBMs).

Re:Garage Nukes

[Stanislav_J (947290)]

Let's face it, the Nuclear Cat is slowly crawling out of the bag and will no longer be containable soon.

Imagine cleaning up after a nuclear cat...oy...

Seriously, it will happen, and sooner than we think. Either a state-sponsored or aided group stealing a nuke or paying off enough disgruntled Russian scientists and engineers to make a decent one, or some independent cell with a sufficient amount of knowhow and enough reasonably enriched uranium to create a big honkin', crude and ugly, but deadly Hiroshima-style boomer. I'm not as worried about the physical effects -- such a device would, indeed, kill thousands and devastate part of whatever city it's set off in, but is likely for financial and physical reasons to be a one-off event. What scares me is this: if you thought our freedoms have already been eroded, compromised, or plain out negated to an uncomfortable degree after 9/11, just wait until some group sets off a nuke somewhere on U.S. soil. When that happens, prepare to live under the Fourth Reich. Even a so-called "dirty bomb" that would merely spread some radiation around will be sufficiently alarming (the very word "radiation" scares the hell out of the masses) will mean more draconian laws, more intrusive surveillance, and more suspensions of Constitutional rights. But that is the victory terrorists hope for -- it's not so much the actual carnage that they seek, but the subsequent panic and overreaction of the populace and their government. "Terror" consists of far more than a body count.

Well,

[Tablizer (95088)]

the server's been nuked.

Oh, come on, this is secret?

[El Jynx (548908)]

They've been on Usenet for ages. That's why Verizon is cutting off access to the binaries.

Re:Oh, come on, this is secret?

[Tablizer (95088)]

They've been on Usenet for ages. That's why Verizon is cutting off access to the binaries.

Oh great. It's one thing for terrorists to have nukes, but even scarier for rabid web trolls to own nukes. Emacs vs. vi may be about to ramp it up...
       

Let me be the first to say:

[NoobixCube (1133473)]

KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[OMNIpotusCOM (1230884)]

You do mean DefKHAAAAAAAN ONE... right?

Why is it

[zappepcs (820751)]

that no version of this story seems to try to point the source of these plans to the US? They probably should be. I can think of no better reason to understand why they found out about it than knowing the source of the material. Color me cynical.

Re:Why is it

[tftp (111690)]

Probably because the story clearly says that the design in question belongs to Pakistan. All things considered, a Pakistani nuclear scientist would be in a better position to steal his country's secret rather than a US design. As a foreigner in the US he, and his agents, would not be allowed to see anything of that sort, not even close. But in Pakistan he'd be an insider, even if he officially is not involved, and then all kinds of things can be done.

Re:Why is it

[johnny cashed (590023)]

But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy -- and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.

Investigators said the evidence that the Khan network was trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming, because if a country or group obtained the bomb design, the technological information would significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon. Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.

I disagree with your first sentence. The article[the NY Times article excerpted above], according to my reading comprehension, does not clearly state that the design "belongs to Pakistan" in the sense that the design is of Pakistani origin. The Khan network was trafficking bomb designs. It specifically mentions the other design of being Chinese in origin.

I would guess that a compact design would have to be tested in order for it to be trusted.

My guess is that US and Soviet designs are on the black market. Once there, they found themselves on the Khan network. How many persons have this knowledge, or have access to this information? Extrapolate from there.

1: US -> Soviet
2: Soviet -> ???
3: ??? -> Khan network

Or:

1: US -> Israel
2: Israel -> ???
3: ??? -> Khan network

Wait, I left out Profit!

Re:Why is it

[tftp (111690)]

And.... clearly Iraq had links to Al Queda?

A strawman.

I know it's comforting to read the news and be able to believe what they say

There is always a fine line between questioning news and the denial. In this particular instance you are claiming that "David Albright, a physicist, former UN weapons inspector and authority on the nuclear smuggling ring" is lying to the whole world, though other IAEA scientists saw the materials and could expose him. I'd listen to David, though, he just might know about the subject a little more than an average slashdotter. If you insist on using fuzzy logic, fine - David's statement has weight of 0.9999 and your opinion has weight of 0.0001.

We can find plans of nuclear weapons, but we can't find Osama?

Yes, and I am not surprised. Khan's network was captured intact - did you read how much data they got? More than a terabyte of documents. Even if none of that is encrypted it takes an army of specialists and linguists to go through them, which is probably what happened. On the other hand, Osama was never captured. I'd be amazed if, for example, the US Army captures a large building and Osama keeps running and hiding *inside* of that building. But Osama - if he is still alive, of course - hides somewhere on Earth, and even if he is merely in Pakistan it's plain impossible to find him, considering that a good deal of Pakistani land is not under control of the central government.

May I be the first to say..

[wanax (46819)]

Who cares? As a New Yorker, who's HS (Stuyvesant) was in the drop zone of 9/11, and who's dad along with several others decided to continue thesis defenses as the towers burned because if you change you life, the terrorists win... I say let them come. Even with nukes. I'll take the chance. My parents will take the chance. I don't really care who gets Nucs these days because MAD works, to such an extent that NK and Iran etc, will think twice before exporting working nukes. Because if a nuke built in Iran goes off in the US, Iran will cease to exist, and they know it.

I have no solution, but to think that this is a major issue is not to understand politics.

Re:MAD is Dead

[by Anonymous Coward]

Iran, now, is it? Jesus, you buy the american propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Oh Crap!

[nick_davison (217681)]

The digital designs, found in heavily encrypted computer files in Switzerland, are believed to be in the possession of the US authorities

Great! They're the last people we need to have even more nuclear weapons.

Re:Oh Crap!

[nick_davison (217681)]

I joke, of course.

But it's worth looking at another way of describing our wonderful nation which is, of course, completely "right" because it's "us" not some other "bad guys":

Do we really want a country that's... invaded two other nations in the last decade (at times against the UN's will); set off civil wars in other nations; ignores the Geneva Convention when it doesn't suit it; has a long history of providing arms to nations/factions it later fights (Vietnamese during WWII, Taleban against the Russians, F-14s and nuclear plants to pre-revolutionary Iran, "We know they have WMDs, we still have the receipts" for Iraq); best of all, was one half of the nuclear arms race that was the greatest threat to all life on our planet for the last sixty years; and finally a nation that's stated its intent to ignore weapons treaties and start testing a new breed of tactical nukes... to have more nuclear plans?

Why

[jandersen (462034)]

"Given that Khan's revelations were made in early 2004, does that mean it took the IAEA 1-2 years to brute-force the encryption?"

No, it just means that it is now time to stir up people's fear of "international terrorism" so whichever government let this bit of news out can squeeze through yet another draconian security measure.

Why am I not surprised?

[AlgorithMan (937244)]

Encryption: Bad
Laptop searches at the border: good
reason: TERRERISTS!!!
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!
THE AXIS OF EVIL!!!

let me guess once, what laws will soon be proposed (which will by the way legalize some more of the unconstitutional actions of the bush-regime...)

Re:Sheesh

[bitrex (859228)]

I am not an engineer, but as I understand it one of the more difficult engineering challenges of designing an implosion type device is getting the arrangement of the explosive lenses just right to compress the plutonium pit into a critical mass symmetrically. Just wrapping the pit in a plain sphere of explosives won't do the job - there will be parts of the explosive that will fire later than others and the compression will be non-symmetric. If the implosion is non-symmetric, the fission primary will fling itself apart before substantial energy from the chain reaction can be generated.

Another design challenge is the electronics needed to fire all the explosive lenses with timing tolerances of less than a few millionths of a second, and switching devices that can switch hundreds of amps of current at those speeds. Needless to say, manufacturers do their best to control who gets their hands on them, though they are "dual use" and probably could be sourced indirectly.

Of course a gun type weapon would be substantially easier to get to work with wider tolerances than an implosion type, but they are so inefficient that they require a relatively huge amount of fissile material to make; perhaps an impractically large amount for a terrorist group to get their hands on without being easily noticed.

Designing the bomb is easy

[by Anonymous Coward]

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

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

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

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

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

Re:NSA, anyone

[dfn_deux (535506)]

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

Re:fearmongering

[JasterBobaMereel (1102861)]

Actually you can build a sub-machine gun in your garage ....AK-47 was designed in the 1940's and is so widely used because it is so easy to manufacture and maintain ....and the ammo is simple and easy to make as well ....

Nuclear weapons are a completely different matter the theory is (relatively) simple, but the practice is complicated, lengthy and requires a lot of technical expertise ...