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?"

Re:Why is it

[tftp]

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:Garage Nukes

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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:Freight container is exactly right!

[mikael_j]

Yes, already at that size it would be difficult to protect yourself from, but as I pointed out in my previous post, reliability would also be important and if you're building your nuke in some warehouse in an unstable country chances are you'll a bit of a problem building a nuke that will go off reliably instead of being just a "fizzle" (although that could be pretty bad as well), and if you want a predictable yield then it's definitely something that takes a lot of resources.

/Mikael

Re:Garage Nukes

[Cyberax]

??

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[shalombi]

Above all the difficulty is not creating the bomb, all the theory is relatively simple and like you said understood by most physics students but there are a lot of other factors especially the calibrations required to get the reaction going. You could smack plutonium together all you want if you don't get it right it won't blow. That's part of the reason for extensive nuclear tests. Well that and the feeling of power when you see and island disappear.

Re:Freight container is exactly right!

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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

[Cyberax]

It IS possible for a terrorist with a backpack to take down a (small) city. US army had that kind of munitions.

However, it also is very improbable, because manufacturing such munitions require a lot of high tech R&D.

It is also possible to take down a big city with a slightly larger munition, like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W80 [wikipedia.org]

Reliability vs yield & efficiency

[The Master Control P]

A gun-assembly bomb is extremely reliable*. The manhattan project designers only included a neutron source as a detonator in Little Boy to make sure it went off at just the right altitude; Based on the rate of neutron release due to spontaneous fissions, the bomb was absolutely gauranteed to have gone off within 1 or 2 seconds anyway. They didn't even build a test bomb they were so sure it would work.

The problem is that gun bombs are an obscene waste of an extremely rare material; Little Boy had about five times as much uranium as Fat Man did plutonium (~100 vs ~20Kg) but a significantly inferior yield (~15 vs ~20KT). It's estimated that maybe 1/10 of Little Boy's uranium had fissioned when it disassembled.

* YMMV depending on isotopic impurities, but terrorists aren't going to be the ones refining the metal.

Re:MAD is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

There has not been even 1 single case of Iranian blowing himself to kill. And as an Iranian I have never heard of 71, 72 virgins !! or whatever crap you quote in my life. Iranian are not arabs, they are persian, they do not belly dance, they do not leave in sands, women are more free than any country in at least middle east. There are 2.5 million students in universities (50,000 PHD students) and 65%-70% are women. Iran has been the origin of a lot of important scientific discoveries and most of Asia has been a part of 8000 old Iranian history. And according Iran's law, anyone who rapes a woman will be tried and hanged (the most serious in the entire world to protect women and children against sexual aggressive people).

Re:Garage Nukes

[QuantumG]

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

[Gideon Fubar]

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. Plus, if you want a decent, guaranteed reaction without unnecessary risk at assembly, you need quite a bit more than critical mass anyway.

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. Unless it was a soccer ball made entirely from uranium-235 that just happened to surreptitiously materialize all in the same spot.

Re:Garage Nukes

[SnowZero]

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:Freight container is exactly right!

[bgackle]

I agree, that is an awesome feature, but unfortunately one that doesn't get advertised since the non-technical public isn't so interested. The secret is to look for weights greater than about 60 or 70 pounds, and lead-acid battery chemistry. If the little leather holster comes with shoulder straps, a sturdy hip belt, and an aluminum frame, you are probably on the right track.

Re:Freight container is exactly right!

[Wavebreak]

The ones plugged into a charger powered by a very large external battery.

Re:fearmongering

[JasterBobaMereel]

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 ...

Re:Garage Nukes

[kocsonya]

If you check net birthrates, the better socio-economic places have the least population increases. In fact, in 2007 most of Europe and Russia had *negative* effective birth rates (i.e. population decrease), Canada almost neutral, the US had slight positive, so had China. High positive net birthrates can be seen to a lesser degree in India and Mongolia and to a very high degree in Africa and the Middle East.

So maybe instead of disease, famine and war we could stabilise world population by actually rising the quality of life of those much less fortunate (e.g. by eliminating famine, diseases and war...). Of course, killing them en masse is also a solution and it is also much more profitable, especially if we can cleverly organise that they kill each other while paying us from both sides for the weaponry to do it efficiently. Alas, since they are usually quite poor, they can't really afford the best stuff, so often they have to (literally) hack throgh each other, but at least we can make shocking documentaries with nice washing powder (guaranteed to make your socks 7.3% more pleasant!) advertisement revenues.

Re:Garage Nukes

[knight24k]

...and if you notice almost all of the developments resulted in extremely small yields either by design or limitations of the delivery system. Most were a tenth of the yield of the bombs dropped on Japan. A small number were larger but most were 2kt or smaller. Many were in the >1kt range, meaning lots of terror, not too much for damage. Doubtful you could take out even a small city with it but could cause severe damage in a few city blocks and the terror factor would be a definite factor.

I was in Artillery in the Marines and was trained as a Nuke Tech. Our largest yield (circa 80-86, 155mm) was 2kt. It was designed for area denial. Not a lot of damage, but a lot of irradiation. The main reason they don't go higher is because you can't get the round far enough downrange to not get hit yourself with the blast or the radiation. They keep them small so that when you fire that thing 10-15 miles downrange there is little chance of the blast or the fallout/radiation coming back to hit you and your allies.

Yes, that one picture shows a small warhead, with a yield of 72tons and weight of 58kg. Hardly a city destroying capable device. The larger devices capable of destroying a small city were on the order of 4ft+ and 800+ lbs. Even the 2kt one I worked with was too large to realistically be man-portable.

Can you get a nuke into a backpack? Probably, but don't fool yourself that you will be able to destroy any cities with it and it is still going to be extremely heavy. You will be able to do something similar to 9/11 with such a device and cause a lot of terror, which might be the whole point. Of course, a dirty bomb might have the same effect and you need far less tech to actually get it to detonate.