On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 12:15 PM, baptista@pccf.net wrote:
exactly right Ken .. as i said before to Tim May - propaganda is the key. Example - antrax theatre.
i must admit i'm warming up to Tim May's tall pipe means of attaining critical mass - much easier then playing with explosive and timing devices - my only question is do our experts see a problem with that means of delivery?
As I made clear in my post, it's not _my_ idea. It's one of the standard "basement nuke" proposed designs. I don't particularly care whether "nuclear terrorist" is added to my dossier by the agents in place here on this list, or by other readers, but I don't want to get credit not due me. Also, I'm not a nuke designer and don't plan to answer questions about neutron crossections, thermal excursions before criticality, etc. I will mention that Ken Brown's "many pieces along the length of the pipe" is the worst way to do this: it buys nothing over the two pieces approach and it causes all sorts of problems with the pieces getting too hot as they come together on the way down. (For example, the penultimate chunk falling toward the ultimate chunk...likely to already be melting and spraying molten U-235 inside the pipe. Just another fizzle. And fizzles are not very interesting, for reasons I stated. A way too expensive way to spread mere radiological terror, which could be done much more cheaply and easily by taking spent fuel rods and blowing them up, or just by grinding up spent fuel rods or other nuclear waste and then dumping it out of a plane over a city.) By the way, some calculations are still needed (by basement nuke designers) on what the closing speed needs to be to get a reasonable chain reaction yield. The rough calculations I saw said that a fall from 40 feet, with good tamping behind and all on sides of the masses, would work. But it would be easy enough to accelerate the falling mass even more. An explosive charge, maybe even a rocket motor. (The Little Boy nuke was of course a "gun" design. The maker of a basement nuke has the advantage of not having to be portable in even the sense that the Hiroshima (Little Boy) and Nagasaki (Fat Man) nukes were portable-with-a-big-bomber. The basement nuke can be surrounded by lots of shielding (to foil N.E.S.T.), can use lots of tamping material, and can be wasteful in use of fissionables.) --Tim May "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater
On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 12:37 PM, Tim May wrote:
By the way, some calculations are still needed (by basement nuke designers) on what the closing speed needs to be to get a reasonable chain reaction yield. The rough calculations I saw said that a fall from 40 feet, with good tamping behind and all on sides of the masses, would work.
But it would be easy enough to accelerate the falling mass even more. An explosive charge, maybe even a rocket motor.
BTW, there's been a lot of recent work on electromagnetic launchers. Accelerating buckets in tubes, using electromagnets. (Outlined in Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress," more than 35 years ago. Also outlined in several recent novels, and of course in technical papers on "mass launch" systems.) An electromagnetic accelerator could accelerate small masses to speeds beyond what explosives could ever accomplish. Imagine the new designs using even less fissionable material (up to certain basic physics limits, of course). Accelerate a small slug of Californium and splat it against a hard target...ah, now _that's_ a basement nuke! --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
Tim May wrote: [...]
As I made clear in my post, it's not _my_ idea. It's one of the standard "basement nuke" proposed designs.
Same here of course. [...]
I will mention that Ken Brown's "many pieces along the length of the pipe" is the worst way to do this: it buys nothing over the two pieces approach and it causes all sorts of problems with the pieces getting too hot as they come together on the way down.
The only reason for mentioning it was that it is perhaps a way people who somehow got hold of the the fissile material, but otherwise had access only to stuff you could pick up on the street, could bodge something together that that would scare others. I'd have no expectation of a nuclear explosion from such a rig. The only advantage is that it is cheap and can be set up in a few hours and (perhaps) might make a truly scary booby-trap. It might be even more effective if it didn't have a timer. A few kilos of fissile uranium literally hanging by a thread in a housing project would make the TV news worldwide.
(For example, the penultimate chunk falling toward the ultimate chunk...likely to already be melting and spraying molten U-235 inside the pipe. Just another fizzle. And fizzles are not very interesting, for reasons I stated. A way too expensive way to spread mere radiological terror, which could be done much more cheaply and easily by taking spent fuel rods and blowing them up, or just by grinding up spent fuel rods or other nuclear waste and then dumping it out of a plane over a city.)
Back to Heinlein again... Ken Brown Shit. If the UK government passes this law they are proposing then this email would probably count as illegal. And anonymous postings are often so tedious.
Ken Brown quoted Tim May (I think) saying:
A way too expensive way to spread mere radiological terror, which could be done much more cheaply and easily by taking spent fuel rods and blowing them up, or just by grinding up spent fuel rods or other nuclear waste and then dumping it out of a plane over a city.)
Won't work on Berkeley, though. The City Council declared Berkeley a "Nuclear Free Zone." Guess that leaves only conventional weapons. S a n d y
On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Won't work on Berkeley, though. The City Council declared Berkeley a "Nuclear Free Zone." Guess that leaves only conventional weapons.
S a n d y
Those restrictions usually also prohibit the *design* of nuclear weapons (don't know if Berzerkeley's does) in which case they are unconstitutional because of the First. DCF
At 05:23 PM 11/19/2001 -0500, Duncan Frissell wrote:
On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Won't work on Berkeley, though. The City Council declared Berkeley a "Nuclear Free Zone." Guess that leaves only conventional weapons.
Those restrictions usually also prohibit the *design* of nuclear weapons (don't know if Berzerkeley's does) in which case they are unconstitutional because of the First.
The ban implicitly covers americium-based smoke detectors, but fortunately when I lived in the East Bay I was a few blocks out of Hayward city limits so I could use them, as long as I drove the long way around when I bought more :-)
On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 01:47 PM, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Ken Brown quoted Tim May (I think) saying:
A way too expensive way to spread mere radiological terror, which could be done much more cheaply and easily by taking spent fuel rods and blowing them up, or just by grinding up spent fuel rods or other nuclear waste and then dumping it out of a plane over a city.)
Won't work on Berkeley, though. The City Council declared Berkeley a "Nuclear Free Zone." Guess that leaves only conventional weapons.
What about night-sights on pistols and analog watches? -- "Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits."--Chris Klein
participants (6)
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Bill Stewart -
Duncan Frissell -
Ken Brown -
Petro -
Sandy Sandfort -
Tim May