HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
One thing that is bothering me these days are all the reports coming out of Afganistan that nuclear bomb making plans were found. Big deal. Anyone on the planet can make a nuclear device if they have the appropriate materials. The hard part is staying alive due to exposure while manufacturing the device. If however death is not an issue then the process itself becomes easy to accomplish. Materials --------- 4 stainless steal salad bowls (5 - 8 inch diameter) 10 pounds of U-235 (Plutonium) 1 containment cylinder in which to fit the salad bowls ? some explosives - C4 platic works best - but TNT or gun powder is acceptable. Assembly -------- 10 pounds of U-235 is required to achive critical mass. However less will work but you will get a sub critical mass on detonation. The difference is taking out an entire city as opposed to a few city blocks. Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass and shape it into the other salad bowl. Keep the two bowls apart - you don't want an accident to cause your project to go critical. C4 explosives work best. You simply mold the C4 into the other two salad bowls. This is the most dangerous part of the project. Improper handling of C4 can cause an explosion. But gun powder is just as effective. Now fit the U-235 salad bowls into the C4 salad bowls and place them at each end of the cylindrical containment. Connect your explosives to a detonator and close off the ends of the cylynder. Make sure the detonator sets off both explosives at the same time. The trick is to bring the U-235 masses together at the same time. And thats it. I would recommend some form of protection while building the project. The aprons worn by dentists will work. They will protect you to some degree from radioactive poisoning. However - your life is only being prolonged by taking such measures - you still will end up dead due to the U-235 radiation regardless of what you do. And thats it. Conclusion ---------- Anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device. So the only issue in building the device is the will to die for a cause. And the only thing I find unfortunate in all of this is that there are so many causes that people are willing to die for. And war will not make those reasons go away - it will only encourage them. regards joe baptista -- Joe Baptista http://www.dot-god.com/ The dot.GOD Registry, Limited The Executive Plaza, Suite 908 150 West 51st Street Tel: 1 (208) 330-4173 Manhattan Island NYC 10019 USA Fax: 1 (208) 293-9773
Hello !Dr., That's just description of chain reaction from school course of physics, every kid know that from age 14. It's impossible to find somewhere in universe 2 kilos of pure plutonium. So, impossible to built nuclear bomb with wight less then 40-50 kilos, and definitely impossible to built it in stainless steal (why you need to steal them ? :) ) salad bowls. DJB> 4 stainless steal salad bowls (5 - 8 inch diameter) DJB> 10 pounds of U-235 (Plutonium) DJB> 1 containment cylinder in which to fit the salad bowls DJB> ? some explosives - C4 platic works best - but TNT or gun powder is DJB> acceptable. DJB> Assembly [...] LOL ! To be realistic - everyone can built BIG bomb with ammony, acetone and sugar - things from nearest supermarket. Not as big as nuclear one, but enough big to destroy building. -- Best regards, Sergei mailto:folio@infocom.zp.ua
On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Sergei Kolodka wrote:
To be realistic - everyone can built BIG bomb with ammony, acetone and sugar - things from nearest supermarket. Not as big as nuclear one, but enough big to destroy building.
That is the issue is it not? The fact is the building of a nuclear bomb and the associated risks are questionable. Much easier to just work with easy to find materials. Incidentally - the process of refining U-235 from U-238 is not impossible - and I suspect U-235 is easily available on the black market. It's normally distributed as little pellets. But you are absolutly correct - much easier to just goto the local supermarket and pick up a few sundries and bang - you've got a bomb - or something dangerous. My point was that it is unfortunate that humanity is so repressed that issues exist which cause individuals or groups to manufacture such things with the intent of committing harm. Sept 11 is an excellent example of this where planes became flying bombs. And it is much easier to walk onto a plane and use it to cause harm then building a nuclear device. regards joe -- Joe Baptista http://www.dot-god.com/ The dot.GOD Registry, Limited The Executive Plaza, Suite 908 150 West 51st Street Tel: 1 (208) 330-4173 Manhattan Island NYC 10019 USA Fax: 1 (208) 293-9773
A couple of corrections from somebody who began studying this threat fifteen years ago. There is little danger to weapons builders from exposure to fissile materials, because they have very little spontaneous radioactivity. The radioactive emissions come when the device goes supercritical during detonation. You can actually hold a subcritical mass of plutonium in your hand for awhile - I'm told it feels warm. Can't say I've tried it myself. Plans for a nuclear device are easy enough to come up with - college kids regularly cause silly-season sensations by publishing "plans" for hydrogen bombs. You can't classify the basic physics, and the data for controlled nuclear reactions is equally applicable to deliberate fast-prompt-critical runaways, which is what nuclear bombs are. What's difficult is not the material, or the material processing, but the detonator TECHNOLOGY. Even that is not a problem if you have LOTS of U-235 or U-233 (plutonium won't work), because you can than use a gun-type device - very heavy and wasteful of material, but workable as proven by Hiroshima's fate. An implosion device (and only an implosion device can be made small) requires the simultaneous (to within microseconds) detonation of perhaps 32 composite shaped charges surrounding a spherical "core" and tamper shell. The manufacture of the charges is very demanding, but the manufacture of the detonators and switches (Krytrons) is the province of maybe four or five firms in the entire world, all carefully monitored by their respective governments. With a full set of _Exploding Wires_, lots of time and extensive manufacturing support, you could eventually get a set of krytrons with the necessary specs. Judging by the number of recent attempts to smuggle krytrons from established sources, however, this has not yet been accomplished by Saddam, Bin Laden or any of their ilk. I'm not losing any sleep over this "threat." Regards, Marc de Piolenc "!Dr. Joe Baptista" wrote:
One thing that is bothering me these days are all the reports coming out of Afganistan that nuclear bomb making plans were found. Big deal. Anyone on the planet can make a nuclear device if they have the appropriate materials. The hard part is staying alive due to exposure while manufacturing the device.
If however death is not an issue then the process itself becomes easy to accomplish.
Materials ---------
4 stainless steal salad bowls (5 - 8 inch diameter) 10 pounds of U-235 (Plutonium) 1 containment cylinder in which to fit the salad bowls ? some explosives - C4 platic works best - but TNT or gun powder is acceptable.
Assembly --------
10 pounds of U-235 is required to achive critical mass. However less will work but you will get a sub critical mass on detonation. The difference is taking out an entire city as opposed to a few city blocks.
Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass and shape it into the other salad bowl.
Keep the two bowls apart - you don't want an accident to cause your project to go critical.
C4 explosives work best. You simply mold the C4 into the other two salad bowls. This is the most dangerous part of the project. Improper handling of C4 can cause an explosion. But gun powder is just as effective.
Now fit the U-235 salad bowls into the C4 salad bowls and place them at each end of the cylindrical containment. Connect your explosives to a detonator and close off the ends of the cylynder. Make sure the detonator sets off both explosives at the same time.
The trick is to bring the U-235 masses together at the same time.
And thats it. I would recommend some form of protection while building the project. The aprons worn by dentists will work. They will protect you to some degree from radioactive poisoning. However - your life is only being prolonged by taking such measures - you still will end up dead due to the U-235 radiation regardless of what you do.
And thats it.
Conclusion ----------
Anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device. So the only issue in building the device is the will to die for a cause. And the only thing I find unfortunate in all of this is that there are so many causes that people are willing to die for. And war will not make those reasons go away - it will only encourage them.
regards joe baptista
-- Joe Baptista
The dot.GOD Registry, Limited The Executive Plaza, Suite 908 150 West 51st Street Tel: 1 (208) 330-4173 Manhattan Island NYC 10019 USA Fax: 1 (208) 293-9773
-- Remember September 11, 2001 but don't forget July 4, 1776 Rather than make war on the American people and their liberties, ...Congress should be looking for ways to empower them to protect themselves when warranted. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin
On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote:
detonation. You can actually hold a subcritical mass of plutonium in your hand for awhile - I'm told it feels warm. Can't say I've tried it myself.
hold on mr. expert. you hold a sub critical mass in your hand and in a few days you end up shitting out your guts, lose your hair and die. so i assume the person who had the opportunity to hold such a critical mass is now dead. where are you getting your info on what it feels like? curious george here. -- The dot.GOD Registry, Limited http://www.dot-god.com/
baptista@pccf.net wrote:
On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote:
detonation. You can actually hold a subcritical mass of plutonium in your hand for awhile - I'm told it feels warm. Can't say I've tried it myself.
hold on mr. expert.
you hold a sub critical mass in your hand and in a few days you end up shitting out your guts, lose your hair and die.
Look it up. The _Reactor Handbook_ is a good source on spontaneous decay rates of fissionables. Plutonium dust is a deadly chemical poison, but a properly formed (and protectively plated) mass of plutonium has very low radioactivity. Consider that nuclear weapons could not be built if the fissiles had high rates of spontaneous decay - the stuff would detonate prematurely, resulting in a fizzle. That, incidentally, is why plutonium cannot be used in a gun-type device - two isotopes are inevitably present, one of which (forgot the mass number, but you can look that up, too) has a spontaneous decay rate that is too high for the (relatively) slow assembly rate of a gun. Marc de Piolenc
F. Marc de Piolenc wrote:
Consider that nuclear weapons could not be built if the fissiles had high rates of spontaneous decay - the stuff would detonate prematurely, resulting in a fizzle. That, incidentally, is why plutonium cannot be used in a gun-type device - two isotopes are inevitably present, one of which (forgot the mass number, but you can look that up, too) has a spontaneous decay rate that is too high for the (relatively) slow assembly rate of a gun.
Weapons grade plutonium contains less than 7% of the non-fissile isotope plutonium-240. This is created if you leave the plutonium-239 in the reactor after it is formed, and it manages to absorb an additional neutron. Small amounts of higher numbered plutonium isotopes are also created by the same process. For this reason, spent fuel from power reactors is not a suitable source of weapons grade plutonium, although it is theoretically possible to build a bomb from reactor grade plutonium if you use enough of it. Bear in mind you will have big thermal problems from short-lived plutonium isotopes if that you employ plutonium from spent fuel, as well as problems from neutrons getting soaked up by non-productive species. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
participants (5)
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!Dr. Joe Baptista -
baptista＠pccf.net
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Eric Cordian -
F. Marc de Piolenc -
Sergei Kolodka