
A Secret Race for Abandoned Nuclear Material - dctoedt
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/world/asia/a-secret-race-for-abandoned-nuclear-material.html
======
Amadou
We should all take the bit about being able to construct a “relatively
sophisticated nuclear device,” with a grain of salt.

An actual bomb is beyond the capability of anybody but a nation-state. Al-
qaeda, et al don't have a chance of anything more than a dirty bomb. While
dirty bombs suck too, they are limited to contamination of a couple of city
blocks - not actual kinetic destruction of those blocks and the contaminated
have a high survivability level given the kind of treatment immediately
available in a city.

Also, in this day and age of the NSA and supporters using weasel words, I have
to wonder if (a) this info was declassified to support justifications for the
NSA and (b) if the line about a "nuclear device" is more weasel wording to
sound scary without literally claiming they could build a bomb.

~~~
phkamp
This is old cold-war spin, and it has been refuted so many times, yet it still
surfaces.

Read "The curve of binding energy", and you will learn from Ted Taylor, one of
the worlds best nuclear warhead designers, that you can make the simplest
atomic bomb by dropping one piece of fissile material on another, provided
they are big enough to become a critical mass.

It won't be tens of megatons, but it will be a perfect terror weapon,
spreading panic, making a large-ish area uninhabitable and costing a fortune
and many years to clean up.

If the terrorists are smart enough bring a couple of sacks of salt, it makes
the mess much worse.

There are damn good reasons to go out of the way to prevent access to the
funny end of the periodic table.

~~~
srean
More qualified people will correct me, but I think there is more to it than
dropping a piece of fissile material over another. I think the trick is to
keep the pieces together long enough before the forces of explosion rips them
apart.

As far as I know there have been several examples of accidents were scientists
did actually drop a fissile blob over another, and the material did go
critical, but thankfully the scientist(s) involved were fast enough to
separate the pieces so that no catastrophes ensued. They themselves died as a
result of exposure to radiation. As I said, more qualified people will be able
to fill in the details and citations.

~~~
6d0debc071
_> More qualified people will correct me, but I think there is more to it than
dropping a piece of fissile material over another_

“With modern weapons-grade uranium, the background neutron rate is so low that
terrorists, if they have such material, would have a good chance of setting
off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto
the other half. Most people seem unaware that if separated HEU [Highly
Enriched Uranium] is at hand it’s a trivial job to set off a nuclear explosion
… even a high school kid could make a bomb in short order.” - Luis Alvarez,
Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1988

The key being, as I understand it, actually getting weapons-grade material of
sufficient purity. Though the actual design of a practical, controlled and
_efficient_ , weapon would doubtless be more somewhat more complex. For which
the n-th country project is well worth reading about:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science)

~~~
fitumpich
That is correct. i work in nuclear material security and safeguards. For what
I can say, which isn't much, it's the security of the material (HEU and Pu)
that makes it hard to make a bomb. Its hard to enrich, and furthermore you
need HEU or Pu. LEU won't get you a big boom. Without enough enrichment, no
Bomb.

Theft and diversion is a big deal with Pu and HEU for this very reason. Which
is why access to either has a two man rule. And because you can safely handle
Pu and HEU,(its just an alpha and criticality hazard so unless you inhale or
eat them, or you have bad geometry it's no big deal), that makes it vital that
you carefully account for all of it. It won't kill the thief, and you don't
need much Pu for a bomb.

------
hristov
I feel bad for the Chinese. They are getting irradiated metal without knowing
it. There is going to be a lot of pain sickness and suffering caused by this
scavenging even thought it will probably never be traced back to Kazakhstan.

~~~
tanzam75
Irradiated just means that it has been exposed to radiation. Doesn't
necessarily mean the copper is itself particularly radioactive. Depends on the
specific circumstances.

~~~
andreasvc
If it doesn't make the copper radioactive, then of what significance is it
that the copper has been irradiated? I understand that irradiation of food
kills bacteria, but with a metal I don't see why it matters.

~~~
Bootvis
Irradiation causes the copper itself to become radioactive. The copper atoms
get hit by the radiation which causes some of them to change in radioactive
isotopes.

~~~
tanzam75
As I said, it depends on the particular circumstances.

For example, suppose it captures a neutron. Copper has two natural isotopes,
copper-63 and copper-65. Copper-64 has a half-life of hours, and decays into
Nickel-64 or Zinc-64, both of which are stable and occur in nature. Copper-66
has a half-life of minutes, and decays into Zinc-66, which is stable and
occurs in nature.

But maybe it didn't capture a neutron. And there might be impurities in the
copper that are dangerous when irradiated. Or maybe it was physically
contaminated with dangerous isotopes of another element.

Just saying that it was "irradiated" doesn't give us enough information to
tell what actually happened.

~~~
hristov
Usually it is bad news. In practice no metal is pure metal, so if you have
copper you are likely to have a bunch of lead atoms that easily get into
radioactive isotopes. So yes, it depends on the circumstances, but it is very
very likely that you end up with radioactive metal.

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msantos
The dangers of dirty bombs should not be ignored. They surely aren't as
destructive as a explosion but nevertheless their possible effects financially
and morally are potentially devastating. Just look at the historical results
of the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo (sort of a dirty bomb) and the unintentional
spread of radioactive material in Goiania/Brazil caused by metal scavengers
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6181011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6181011))

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aunty_helen
Voz island in the Aral Sea is another example of this happening but on the
chemical weapons side of things.

Nick Middleton travelled there in 'Going to More Extremes' (which is well
worth the watch).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAFGx9nU3q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAFGx9nU3q4)

------
dm2
Why wouldn't they want to use it for fuel in nuclear reactors?

~~~
mashmac2
My understanding is that weapons-grade plutonium is not easily usable in a
conventional reactor; the vast majority of reactors in operation today run on
uranium, which is enriched to a much lower percentage than weapons-grade
fissile material.

TL;DR different elements, different concentrations of isotopes.

~~~
dm2
They already have the facilities to recycle plutonium for MOX fuel.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel#Fast_reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel#Fast_reactors)

[http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Fuel-
Re...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Fuel-
Recycling/Mixed-Oxide-Fuel-MOX)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/mox-
fuel_b_27078...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/mox-
fuel_b_2707864.html)

[http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/basicmoxinfo.htm](http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/basicmoxinfo.htm)

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tlrobinson
This reads exactly like the beginning of an action thriller movie.

