Re: russia_1.html
From: Harka <root@DosLinux> US Sees No KGB Role in Russia's Nuclear Arms
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States Friday rejected the claim of a Russian scientist that Moscow had secretly developed nuclear "suitcase bombs" under KGB orders in the 1970s specifically for terrorist purposes.
[...]
Testifying before Congress Thursday, Alexei Yablokov, a respected scientist who served on the Russian National Security Council, contradicted statements by Russian officials denying the existence of the weapons and buttressed claims that many of them have gone missing.
"I am absolutely sure that they have been made," he told the House Military Research and Development subcommittee.
The issue arose when former Russian National Security Adviser Alexandr Lebed alleged that up to 100 portable suitcase-sized bombs were unaccounted for since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
According to Lebed, who has agreed to testify before the House committee later this month, the devices have an explosive capacity of one kiloton -- the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT -- can be activated by a single person and could kill as many as 100,000 people.
Yablokov said he had spoken to the scientists who worked on the weapons and so was certain of their existence.
[...] I saw part of this on CSPAN. Yablokov made one point that I felt was interesting. These devices were made during the Cold War period, and it's extremely unlikely that any could have been made since the Soviet Union fell apart. The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to remove the fission products. Thus, a nuke left on the shelf eventually turns into a dud. The time since the Soviet Union fell (which is the upper limit of the last time these particular 'suitcases' could plausibly have been repacked) is long enough ago that they are now either duds or becoming unreliable (I don't know if the degredation results in gradually decreasing yield, or if one day they simply don't work). Of course, even contaminated Pu in the hands of a terrorist (or a State) is a disquieting notion. Peter Trei trei@Process.com
Even a fizzle with a yield in the hundreds of tons equivalent is respectable. Plutonium decay products have a high neutron cross-section and steal the fast neutrons necessary for the chain reaction to build. Sufficient amounts can kill off the last three or more re-doublings which is where most of the explosive power comes from. On the other hand finely dispersed Pu and other fission products plus the irradiated material that becomes radioactive will make a few square miles dangerous to inhabit for several years. /pbp
At 3:01 AM -0700 10/6/97, Peter Trei wrote:
The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to remove the fission products.
I think this comment is in error. Plutonium has a half life on the order of 250,000 years, so very little decay products would build up in 6 years. The tritium used in thermonuclear weapons has a much shorter half life, and would need to be replaced about that often. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Internal surveillance | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | helped make the USSR the | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | nation it is today. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
At 09:37 AM 10/6/97 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
At 3:01 AM -0700 10/6/97, Peter Trei wrote:
The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to remove the fission products.
I think this comment is in error. Plutonium has a half life on the order of 250,000 years, so very little decay products would build up in 6 years. The tritium used in thermonuclear weapons has a much shorter half life, and would need to be replaced about that often.
One of the decay products of tritium (half-life: 12.5 years) is Helium-3, which aggressively absorbs neutrons and poisons the fission reaction of the plutonium. If one has access to more tritium, which is commercially available for about US $50,000 per gram, the existing tritium can be purified and combined with the new tritium to bring the bomb back to full power. If someone has the resources to obtain the bomb in the first place, refreshing the tritium probably wouldn't be a major problem. Jonathan Wienke What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is too hard to understand? (From 2nd Amendment, U.S. Constitution) PGP 2.6.2 RSA Key Fingerprint: 7484 2FB7 7588 ACD1 3A8F 778A 7407 2928 DSS/D-H Key Fingerprint: 3312 6597 8258 9A9E D9FA 4878 C245 D245 EAA7 0DCC Public keys available at pgpkeys.mit.edu. PGP encrypted e-mail preferred. Get your assault crypto before they ban it! US/Canadian Windows 95/NT or Mac users: Get Eudora Light + PGP 5.0 for free at http://www.eudora.com/eudoralight/ Get PGP 5.0 for free at http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pgp-form.html Non-US PGP 5.0 sources: http://www.ifi.uio.no/pgp/ http://www.heise.de/ct/pgpCA/download.shtml ftp://ftp.pca.dfn.de/pub/pgp/V5.0/ ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/pc/win95/pgp ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/mac/pgp http://www.shopmiami.com/utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/replay/pub/pgp/pgp50/win/ RSA export-o-matic: print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
participants (4)
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Bill Frantz -
Jonathan Wienke -
Paul Pomes -
Peter Trei