HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device

[Karsten M. Self]

on Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 10:17:28PM -0800, Tim May (tcmay at got.net) wrote:
> On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 03:29 PM, Karsten M. Self wrote:

> >   - Credible military weapons have minimum requirements of both
> >   efficacy -- efficient use of supercritical energy -- and
> >   predictability -- having the damned thing go off in the silo /
> >   bunker / hanger / munitions dump rather than the chosen target
> >   isn't particularly useful.
> >
> > Tighter constraints => Longer fulfillment time.
> >
> > The original US project, as described by Feynman, involved much
> > radiation exposure and high risks of criticality incidents at Oak Ridge,
> > some of which are documented in his biographical essay collections.
>
> I knew Feynman (*) and I knew the main survivor or the criticality
> accident at Los Alamos. (Klein, who survived "ticking the dragon's
> tail" and had annual tests done for the rest of his life, which just
> ended a couple of years ago.) You are overstating the "high risks of
> criticality incidents," I think strongly.
>
> (* This should mean something to you: we had him over for dinner at our
> place on Camino del Sur, I.V.)

One of my regrets is never having met Feynman.  I've enjoyed his works.



> Feynman wasn't even involved in that end of the physics. A couple of
> deaths happened, which is hardly surprising given the speed and
> magnitude of the war effort. More Americans died when a particular truck
> hit a land mine. More Americans probably died in Los Alamos when their
> trucks ran off the roads into the ravines. Get some perspective.

The risks I'm referring to are those resulting in his visits to Oak
Ridge at which he found that workers didn't know of, let alone
understand, the concept of criticality.

I believe the issue was covered at more depth in _Surely You Must be
Joking_ or _What do You Care What Other People Think_, but I've just got
Gleick's biography _Genius_ handy.  P. 198-199.  It's explicit that
Feynman was part of the assessment and solution of the situation:

    At Oak Ridge, where the first batches of enriched uranium were
    acculating, a few officials began to consider some of the problems
    that might arise.  One letter that made its way to Los Alamos from
    Oak Ridge opened, "Dear Sir, At the present time no provisions have
    been made in the 9207 Area for stopping reactions resulting from the
    bringing together by accident of an unsafe quantity of material...."
    Would it make sense, asked the writer -- a plant superintendent with
    the Tennessee Eastman Corporation -- to install some kind of
    advanced fire-extinguishing equipment, possibly using special
    chemicals?  [Robert] Oppenheimer recognized the peril waiting in
    such questions.  He brought in [Edward] Teller and Emilio Segre,
    head of the experimental division's radioactivity group.  Segre paid
    an inspection visit, other thorists were assigned, and finally the
    problem was turned over to Fenyman, with his expertise in
    critical-mass calculations.

    [A situation exacerbated by storage of "wet" uranium -- water being
    an effective damper, lowering requirements for a critical episode.]

    ....Through dozens of rooms in a series of buildings Feynman saw
    drums with 300 gallons, 600 gallons, 3,000 gallons....He relaized
    that the plant was headed toward a catastrophe.  At some point the
    buildup of uranium would case a nuclear reaction that would release
    heat and radioactivity at near-explosive speed....He laid out an
    detailed program for ensuring safety.  He also invented a practical
    method...that would let engineers make a conservative approximation,
    on the spoot, of the safe levels of bomb material stored in various
    geometrical layouts.  A few people, long afterward, thought he had
    saved their lives.

A more recent incident of similar nature was the Oct. 1, 1999,
Tokaimura, Japan incident in which at least 19 workers were exposed to
radiation from a critical mass of enriched uranium nuclear fuel, later
reports put the number as high as 667 workers and residents.

    http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep99/1999L-09-30-04.html
    http://www.physicstoday.com/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p61a.html

    Radiation levels reportedly reached 15,000 times normal levels 1.2
    miles from the site, too high to allow worke to approach the
    accident site. Residents within a 10 kilometer (six mile) radius of
    the plant have been told to stay indoors. The order affects close to
    300,000 people. About 160 were evacuated.

Two workers in the incident died as a result of radiation exposure,
Hisashi Ouchi, December 22, 1999, Masato Shinohara April 27, 2000.  The
third worker most directly exposed to the incident, Yutaka Yokokawa, was
released from hospital in December, 1999.

The direct cause of the Tokaimura incident appears to have been
corporate corner (and cost) cutting, sanctioned by the plants owners to
the extent it was part of documented procedure:

    http://www.joewein.de/tokaimura.htm

    The accident happened when workers preparing nuclear fuels mixed
    uranium oxide with nitric acid using a stainless steel container
    instead of a mixing apparatus. This shortcut was described in an
    illegal operating manual drafted by the company. The manual had
    never been approved by the supervising ministry, as was legally
    required. The procedure violated some of the most basic safety
    requirements that were well known in the nuclear industries since
    the early 1940s. By circumventing the mixing apparatus an excessive
    amount of nuclear fuel could be inserted at any one time, which lead
    to a nuclear chain reaction. Most likely the illegal shortcut was an
    attempt to save costs in order to be more competitive with foreign
    fuel suppliers. The shortcut had been used for seven or eight years
    before the accident happened. The three workers were performing this
    task for the first time and were wearing t-shirts instead of
    protective clothing and the required film badges to measure
    radioactive exposure.



> > The Hanford reservation is still a glowing waste zone, much of which
> > greatly postdates a fairly deep understanding of radiation hazards.

> You are spouting nonsense with your "glowing waste zone" idiocy.
>
> I lived west of the Hanford plant for a few years and had occasion to
> measure the radioactivity levels of samples. The ash from the eruption
> of Mt. St. Helens was hotter than all but a very few small pockets of
> soil in the Tri-City Area.

The issue under discussion is long-term contamination resulting from
military nuclear projects.  Contamination at the Hanford facility has
been well documented; one quick cite:

    http://www.whistleblower.org/www/hanford.htm

    Hanford waste disposal practices throughout its production history
    were horrendously shoddy. Government officials estimate that as much
    as 450 billion gallons of contaminated liquid wastes were dumped to
    the soils. As a result, the groundwater under more than 85 square
    miles of the site is contaminated above current standards. Some of
    the most radioactive materials were stored in underground tanks,
    constructed of concrete and containing a carbon steel liner.  Of the
    177 underground tanks, 69 are acknowledged to have failed so far,
    and to have leaked radioactive and chemically toxic solutions to the
    soils, where they have migrated to the groundwater which feeds the
    Columbia River.

Peace.

--
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>       http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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