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]

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]

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[Cyberax]

??

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

Re:Garage Nukes

[Ours]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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:

[Shakrai]

ou 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.

I'd be surprised if they bothered. Like I said, one of them was sleeping. The other two were reading. Granted, it's probably a pretty boring job at a small airport with no ongoing arrivals or departures, but sleeping on duty? I'd be fired for that and my job is a lot less critical than a TSA screener.

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?

I don't think they care about blowing it up but I could point out that some of the 9/11 hijackers gained access to the air transport system from a small regional airport (Portland, Maine as I recall)

Re:Garage Nukes

[dgm3574]

"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:

[Shakrai]

i know it's "bad" but racial profiling really is a pretty efficient way for security to filter through so many people. i'm not advocating wanton racism or any nonsense like that, but the fact of the matter is that most peoples who practice islam are ethnic groups that caucasians would consider "non-whites." Given that our perceived "enemy" are radical muslims, we can ignore pretty much all white people whilst screening for baddies at the airport.

Yeah, cuz we all know that no white person [wikipedia.org] would ever fall for radial Islam or do something stupid like travel to Afghanistan and meet Osama Bin Ladin.

Re:Garage Nukes

[bigstrat2003]

"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

[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]

Re:Garage Nukes

[Cyberax]

That's totally incorrect:
1) Actually, I'm Russian.
2) I'm not (very) afraid of mini-nukes falling into terrorist hands. There's a lot of other things to be afraid of.

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:

[Anonymous Coward]

Compact, portable nuclear weaponry certainly exists -- missile warheads by their very nature have to be both compact and are generally engineered to have minimal mass (to maximize range).

Designing for small size requires the use of Plutonium, as even fully enriched Uranium devices fail to scale to sizes which can be carried by even a pair of human strong, physically fit beings.

239Pu does not occur in nature, and its production even in quantites of a few kilograms requires large industrial scale operations o

Re:Garage Nukes

[Hijacked Public]

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

[Cyberax]

Look, I've even provided a link describing EXISTING weapon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition [wikipedia.org] - it's about 1kt and it weights about 70kg. Salt it with, say, cobalt for additional effect. It won't bring down New-York, of course, but it surely can destroy a smaller city.

A 150kt bomb weights about 130kg - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W80 [wikipedia.org] Are you ready to bet that it can't be scaled down further? And in any case, 130kg is still within range for 'baggage nuke'.

And I'm not afraid of 'anything nuclear'. In fact, I now work at the Chernobyl power plant.

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:Garage Nukes

[SnowZero]

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?

Ah, the "You didn't level New York, just lower Manhattan" technicality. If you want to be strict about it, a nuke can't level any city, since there will still be the occasional bank safe that survives. 1kt is sufficient for the downtown section of many cities. Though you are correct in that it will not completely level one, I don't think that was the original the point.

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.

Just because one cannot think of something doesn't mean others with sufficient creativity cannot. The height problem is solved easily by going to the top of the tallest building you can find, which will get you 1000-1400ft of elevation in major cities. Need a bigger bomb? Deliver it in a coke machine (idea borrowed from a movie of course).

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.

...ignoring the 1kt bomb already linked to in Wikipedia. 70kg can be carried, you would just need to make yourself look like a backpacker. A 200kt weapon would fit in a coke machine, office furniture, small industrial equipment, etc. Also, for reference, the Oklahoma City truck bomb had a yield of only 0.002kt (i.e. 2 tons). So, even by your estimation of 0.1kt for a portable nuke, you would expect a 50x more powerful weapon detonated at the same elevation to have a lesser effect? Granted, the Oklahoma bomber got "lucky" in finding a weak spot, but a more portable weapon could be placed almost anywhere to get maximum effect.

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.

You seem to be mixing practicality and likelihood with possibility. Just because something is unlikely to ever be a real threat doesn't make it impossible. As a physics and design problem, it's already been solved. We're just (thankfully) unlikely to ever see the effects due to engineering difficulty.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Garage Nukes

[GreyyGuy]

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:

[ballwall]

I think you mean "nucular"

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.

Re:Garage Nukes

[jacquesm]

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

[El Jynx]

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:

[Maxo-Texas]

Golden age... equal people having more kids... equal end of golden age with an even larger die off.

Fundamental problem.. the problem underneath almost every problem is that the world population is already probably double what it should be.

We are pretty much doomed so just enjoy the ride until the end.

Re:

[sqrt(2)]

I've said it before that nearly all socio-economic and geo-political problems can be either solved or greatly reduced by a drastic reduction of Earth's population. 1b or less humans would be ideal. Unfortunately that's impossible to accomplish without genocide or some massive abridgment of human rights, neither of which I would like to see. People aren't going to slow their reproductive habits voluntarily. Instead of sustainable low numbers that we can support comfortably the human population will expand un

Re:Garage Nukes

[mwlewis]

People aren't going to slow their reproductive habits voluntarily.

Except for all of the places where it's already happened, right? Like Japan, most of Europe...

Re:

[stewbacca]

Isn't there an inverse correlation between intellect and how many broodlings one spits out? If that is true, then the solution to overpopulation is education. Unfortunately, it seems there are far more uneducated people in the world having 6-7 kids, which statistically negates my two children.

Re:

[Fat Cow]

It's not intellect, it's prosperity. And those 6-7 kids are more prosperous than their parents were and will almost certainly have much fewer children as well.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Planar]

1b or less humans would be ideal. Unfortunately that's impossible to accomplish without genocide or some massive abridgment of human rights, neither of which I would like to see. People aren't going to slow their reproductive habits voluntarily.

It's even worse than you think, because our capitalist economy is no more than a giant pyramidal scheme based on the growth of the population. If people somehow manage to slow down their reproductive habits, we'll get an economic collapse that will make 1929 look like a golden age.

Re:

[Jasin Natael]

If people somehow manage to slow down their reproductive habits, we'll get an economic collapse that will make 1929 look like a golden age.

Watch Japan. T Minus ~5-10 years and counting. The only way to grow the working population when the birth rate is low and declining, is to extend the useful, healthy, mentally-able life of productive elders. Efforts are underway, so we'll see if technology can overtake the problem.

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:

[ZombieWomble]

Golden age... equal people having more kids... equal end of golden age with an even larger die off.

You make this statement quite confidently, but have you any evidence that it is the case? Looking at birth rate statistics, there's a pretty clear negative correlation between quality of life and birth rate in a given country. There would probably be a single generation or so rise in growth rate as birth rates take some time to equalise to the new longer life expectancies and better quality of life, but the world's population running away if quality of life improves globally does not seem like a forgone co

Re:Garage Nukes

[nadaou]

we're doomed! Doomed! DOOMED! Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!

Re:

[bigtangringo]

I hate to rain on your Malthusian-oblivious parade, but drinking water's going to be a very serious problem real soon (relatively speaking).

Re:Garage Nukes

[RAMMS+EIN]

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]

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]

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

[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:

[Wavebreak]

While I'm no fan of christianity, I feel I should point out that past misdeeds by someone else do not excuse similar behavior in the present, regardless of who was involved. Stop with the 'christians did it first' bullshit already. It's true, but also completely irrelevant.

Re:

[bigtangringo]

Yup, just like salt.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Fieryphoenix]

But a Golden Age only lasts ten turns!

Re:Garage Nukes

[mikael_j]

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]

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]

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]

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:

[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

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: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:

[Tom]

Frankly, I wouldn't use a cell phone ringer as trigger. You'd just hate for the thing to blow up in your face because some telemarketer called.

Re:

[Terje Mathisen]

The way I would have done this would have been to use a particular SMS text message, and not just a voice call.

With 140 bytes (160 7-bit chars), you can make the detonation key arbitrarily un-guessable.

For extra credit, add a dead-man switch: An encrypted message which must be received every day (hour/week/whatever) to delay detonation.

At this point you really wouldn't want to experience a longterm cell phone outage. :-(

Terje

Re:

[Wavebreak]

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

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:

[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:

[Max Threshold]

Exactly. The devil's in the practical details.

For example, I could probably build a jet bomber. I know the theory behind jet engines. I know a little about aerodynamics, fabrication, welding, electronics, and the physics of aiming an aerial bomb. Whatever I don't know, I know how to look up. But building it would take a long time, cost a lot of money, involve a lot of trial-and-error, and the end result would be an impractical piece of junk compared to any real military aircraft. Same goes for buildin

Re:Garage Nukes

[siddesu]

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]

"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.

Re:

[siddesu]

And your point is? Most of the population in both India and Pakistan still live in poverty despite each of them having the odd atomic bomb, and both countries suffered heavy economic penalties because of their decision to pursue nukes.

Garage nuke ? You probably mean GNUke !

[erlehmann]

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 nuke ? You probably mean GNUke !

[timotten]

The KDE project plans to release an easy-to-use GUI version that offers GNUke functionality to a range of unsophisticated users. The program will be called KUKE.

Re:

[Chrisq]

That's due for release shortly after HURD.

Re:Garage Nukes

[Stanislav_J]

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]

the server's been nuked.

Oh, come on, this is secret?

[El Jynx]

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]

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]

KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[OMNIpotusCOM]

You do mean DefKHAAAAAAAN ONE... right?

Why is it

[zappepcs]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:

[Kjella]

And even leaders may be mad. Hitler, for example, played for all-or-nothing (ending up with nothing, luckily).

Hitler stood a chance, more than a chance. The Axis damn near conquered all of Europe, and if he'd either finished the battle for Britain or not gone after Russia he would probably have won. The German war machine was completely unsurpassed and it was only a massive alliance that overpowered them. Sure he was mad with power, but not the level of "let's try to nuke the US from a banana republic" kind of mad.

Re:

[CptPicard]

Yes, +1... the GP is very correct. It was the provocation of the USSR into the conflict that was Hitler's great mistake. Of course, considering that Hitler hated the Soviets and Communism more than anything and specifically felt like the Slavs were the untermenschen that needed to be conquered for Lebensraum, there was a certain urgency to the attack, of course... by the time of the attack the USSR was still weak enough so that the Germans were able to push deep into their territory, but Russia is deep...

Oh Crap!

[nick_davison]

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]

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]

"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]

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...)

Encryption key

[TummyX]

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?


The IAEA were pretty pissed when they found out that the key was 0xDEADBEEF

brute-force the encryption?

[jsse]

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?

Nope, that's the time it took for their lawyers to get DMCA-exemption order from federal court for performing decrpytion. The actually decryption only took them 1 minute. God saves americans.

fearmongering

[Tom]

The real question is: Whose agenda does it fit to reveal this, and now.

See, nukes aren't that complicated. Most of us learn the basics at school. Assuming the blueprint is genuine, and of a tested design, that's a piece of valuable work, but not groundbreaking. There is no threat of any living-in-caves terrorists coming up with a nuke due to some blueprints. Funny how all this fearmongering always forgets the amount and quality of equipment you need to actually turn a blueprint into a working bomb.

It's roughly comparable to having a blueprint of a machine gun (available in most libraries, and Google will probably give you a hundred of them at least), and an actual working machine gun. You just can't build one in your garage, there's a little bit more specialised precision equipment required. And then you'd still need the ammo.

So who is trying to get a bigger budget for what? That's the question we should be asking.

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 ...

Brute force and brute force

[tietokone-olmi]

There's many different approaches. Bruteforcing even a 128-bit AES key will still take more time than life on Earth has, even given Moore's observation on semiconductor density.

However, bruteforcing a passphrase usually takes considerably less time.

Bruteforcing an interrogation subject can be very quick indeed.

Hollywood Encryption?

[flajann]

"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..."

"Heavily encrypted?" What does that mean? Couldn't be all that heavy if the encryption was broken, right?

Oh, perhaps they mean Hollywood-style encryption! In nearly every Hollywood movie you ever see that contains anything about encryption, the encryption is always "heavy" and yet broken long before the movie ends. Since this is probably the only exposure to "encryption" most of the public sees, the public must have a very warped idea of what encryption is all about!

It always amazes me that encryption that should take longer than the Age of the Universe to break is "broken" in just a few minutes by some "super" kid that can barely even spell the word!

Maybe I should do a website on "Hollywood Mathematics" along with the one I want to do on "Hollywood Physics"...

Re:

[Teancum]

This is just something running on Hollywood OS. You know, that wonderful operating system that can perform network searches in a matter of just a few seconds finding the most trivial piece of data you ever could think of...

And of course being able to blow up a 240x320 jpeg image of a football stadium to be able to read not only the license plate number but also the serial number of the annual registration tag of the cool red Porsche that just happens to have the rear end pointed toward the camera. Now tha

Blueprints are easy to get

[192939495969798999]

The blueprints for nukes aren't that hard to get; fortunately, the weapons-grade plutonium purchase attempt will raise a few real big flags.

Nothing new here... move along...

[Archtech]

A first-year physics student called John Aristotle Philips did all this as a summer project his first year at Princeton, way back in the early 19790s. Read the book - it's quite enlightening (as well as amusing).

http://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-True-Story-Bomb-Kid/dp/0671827316/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213618717&sr=1-2 [amazon.com]

I think I have seen these blueprints before

[ymgve]

I think I have seen these blueprints before, I think they were named something like

Pakistani.Nuke.Blueprints.2004.REPACK.READNFO.KHaNDOX.torrent

Re:Sheesh

[bitrex]

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.

Re:

[hairykrishna]

A bomb is not a reactor. The trick is getting enough together quickly enough that you get a big bang rather than a moderate one that just scatters your fissile material. This is still, for uranium at least, a relatively trivial problem but not as trivial as you imply.

Designing the bomb is easy

[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]

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:

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

post-it note.

Re:

[russotto]

Heavily encrypted? How did they break them then?

Waterboarding.

You Been Played by The CIA

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

CIA, Khan and the Nuclear Weapon Designs

The task of this piece [washingtonpost.com] on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control [armscontrolwonk.com] at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story [spiegel.de] about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped [armscontrolwonk.com] by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also [armscontrolwonk.com] turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies [blogspot.com] having been involved in such. A new book asserts [washingtonpost.com] that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' [sify.com] legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed [tagesspiegel.de] (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

Re:

[Overzeetop]

We should try to cut off the terrorists funding source. There must be something which is funneling huge dollars to their backers...I just can't figure out what it is...