Well apparently yes. Until it you find it roosting on your windowsill. . .
Back on the “How Nukes Work subject”
Alrighty, IANANPOEE (IANA Nuclear Physicist or Explosives Engineer), but I read more than is good for me.
Critical Mass is something that happens to unstable radioactive material, and it is NOT the same as a nuclear explosion. Chernobyl is an example of the nuclear materials achieving critical mass, and ‘melting down’. I’m not sure what happens at the atomic level, but the effect of CM is that an enormous amount of heat and harmful radiation is produced. Note again, this is NOT the same as a nuclear explosion, which is energy released by the fission of atoms.
So sure, if you drop an explosive onto a nuke, you’ll obliterate the nuclear device and scatter radioactive material a about. I can’t say whether or not it might cause the nuclear material to achieve critical mass, but in either case a nuclear explosion is not generated. I would tend to think that the nuclear material in a bomb would not readily achieve critical mass, for the simple reason that it would be inconvenient if your bomb cache started melting down due to the instability of the materials; but again, IANANPOEE -
I recommend reading HowStuffWorks.com’s description of how a nuclear bomb works, if you want a general overview of what makes a nuclear bomb go boom.
It touches briefly on how specific the circumstances have to be for the fissionable material to reach critical mass. You’re not going to accidentally set off a nuclear bomb by dropping it. (If I felt ballsy enough, and had the opportunity, I’d kick it a few times… but I doubt I’m that confident. :D)
I saw a couple of people asking if they had/have suitcase nukes, why did they bother with hijacking, and conventional types of bombs/attacks, rather than just set off a nuke.
My thoughts on this are simple.
The psychological effect the attacks on 9/11 were devestating to say the least, and in my mind are about the same as if it had been a nuke. Now, look at the outrage the attack caused world wide. I don’t think he/they thought it would cause the effect that has occured with almost all the contries not only condeming it, but working with the US to fight it.
I think that if they do have suitcase nukes, (And mind you, i’m not still convinced they have any. I’m not gonna rule it out, but I agree with clairobscur, that if they do have them, they may be of no use by now.) I believe they would be holding them as a last resort or grand finale type of scenario, as setting off a nuke would basically be a death warrant event from just about every country on the face of the planet on whoever set it off. Basically what you have right now but magnified about a 100 fold.
So in my mind, I don’t expect to see nukes used unless he’s pushed into a corner, and that would also have to assume that they do have nukes, which like I said earlier, I have my doubts on.
I’m not kidding. Even at the link you posted I didn’t see any evidence that suggested that a nuclear device fitted into a suitcase actually exists at the time.
(One quick clarification. Sometimes the suitcases carried by the US or Russian President that carry the launch codes are refered to as the “Nuclear Suitcase.” That is not what I am talking about here.)
Fitting a nuclear device into a small case the size of a suitcase requires an incredible level of technology. Few nations have the capability to even build an atomic weapon, much less refine the design down to such an efficient size. Thus my statement that it is “unlikely.”
You don’t leave the trigger mechanism and the raw material needed for the nuke in the same place. To put it another way, you don’t keep the gun loaded and the safety off.
I’m suggesting that terrorists might have suitcase bombs, and that the Russians might have “lost track” of those devices.
But they don’t have the metal. Uranium, plutonium–the stuff is pretty precious, pretty hard to come by, and damn dificult to “make.”
Real, real, real expensive, too. Everybody’s always talking about the Black Market, but I’ve got my doubts that somebody could just steal and sell some uranium or plutonium and no one would notice.
I’ve always put my faith in Murphy’s Law, as well as the incompetency of man. It’s why I have problems with conspiracies. just don’t believe that people are that efficient, smart, far-seeing, or clever.
To a large extent last Tuesday, what could have gone right for those terrorists, did. It went far better for them than they had any right to expect.
One needn’t go with a SADM for a ‘suitcase’ bomb. A nuke artillery shell will do nicely if you can work-up an arming mechanism.
Here is a list of basic stats on American Nukes. Look up the entry for “W-34”. 11KT, 17" around by 34" long, ~320 lbs. You could put one of those in car and do some serious damage. Fortunately, the US has dismantled that series. Or if that’s too big, you could go with a “W-44”. You’d lose one KT, but you’d also shed a lot of weight, and much of the inconvenient size. Fortuanately, that one, too, is out of service. For a more handy bomb, you could go for a 155mm artillery shell, producing a mere 72 Tons (W-48), weighing in at a svelte 130 pounds. Not small enough to tote about the city? We’ve even got smaller ones for the weaklings in the crowd: The W-54, at 51-55lbs, and a yield from 10 to 250 tons. Just the sort of thing a terrorist would love.
Fortunately, most of these in the American arsenal have been retired, and all need refurbishing periodically, or they’ll either fail to produce a nuclear blast, or will “squib”: Produce a less-than-designed-yield. Even a squib could be devestating for a sufficiently large warhead, and a miss-fire that sets off the HE initiating charge could still scatter poisonous and radioactive material for quite some distance.
There’s no telling what condition the former Soviet arsenal is in, nor how many weapons they’ve got in their stockpile, nor how well controlled that stockpile is.
That said, I strongly doubt that terrorist organizations will actually set-off a nuke. Setting off a nuke will immediately put “paid” to all tollerance for the terrorist organization around the world. Witness the corner Bin Laden finds himself in today, and realize that it was just(?!) airplanes he used. Imagine the damage to his cause if he’d used a nuke? There is, unfortunately, not accounting for what an deranged individual might do, should one come into possession of a small portable nuke and the means necessary to set it off.
Good link pulykamell. This is why I try to never say things like “Absolutely not.” “Unlikely” gives me more wiggle room. I’ll be using some of that room now.
The gist of it is that the Russians aren’t exactly coming clean on what their nuclear capabilites are. But that’s not unexpected. They have compelling reasons to keep such things secret so their denials have been inconsistent. But this is probably more a result of them not wanting to admit what their capabilities actually are.
On the other hand some of the evidence provided to support the suitcase nuke theory is also highly suspect.
From the above link:
The article concludes that:
So I’d like to switch the target of my “unlikely” response to be affirmly fixed to the question of whether or not Bin Laudin has access to nukes. I highly doubt it. He’s had too many opportunites to use them if he did (Either in the US, Chechnya, or the middle-east) and yet he has not. If he can move people in and out of Afghanistan, he can move something the size of an artillery shell around as well.
Do suitcase bombs exist? I dunno. And if I found out I’ll probably dissappear.
Well, Russian protestations aside, We had low-yield weapons that would handily fit in a suitcase or duffel bag, so I’m not really confident that they’re telling the truth. See the above FAS links for all the gory details.
i know this is a quote from quite a few posts up the page, but i think this topic is key. to say that a nuke would be more “efficient” seems to me like an overstatement. let’s first weigh the costs of the procedure that occured against the hypothetical procedure of a backpack nuke (these are really basic, but hear me out):
the costs of what did occur:
[ul][li]at least 19 terrorists killed[/li][li]months of flight training for the pilots[/li][li]car rentals, plane tickets, and other minor financial expenses[/ul][/li]
the costs of what could have happened:
[ul][li]finding or training specialists to detonate the bomb[/li][li]paying for the nuke[/li][/ul]
do you think bin laden really cared about the lives of these people? and even if he did, wouldn’t he find these sacrifices acceptable to further his religious cause? since he had access to these suicidal fanatics who did this, why would he even have to use a nuke? he does something like this, catches us off guard, and then, if he has access to a nuke, he uses it later when he needs something more powerful because of our upped security, or for a back-up plan for himself if we invade. it wouldn’t make any tactical sense to use the nuke first, and then leave himself without strong defense against retalliation. in war, money is needed above all. just look at the U.S. government, allocating $40 billion to aid bush’s “crusade” against terrorism. if bin laden wanted to start a war of “islam vs. the west” shouldn’t we expect him to save his financial-intensive resources until after the initial attack?
I concur with jonfromdenver. It makes no sense to open a war by deploying your biggest gun first. The plan that was executed on 9/11/01 was remarkable in that it incorporated redundancy, cost effectiveness, and a remarkable casualty rate. It also provided a massive boost to the organization’s revenue stream through pre-emptive investment. Whoever did it is not stupid. Evil, but not dumb.
Think of it this way. You’re going to start a war. Would you do so whenever, just on a whim, or would you wait until you had all your units in place, poised to strike at your command? Would you make a move that heightened security in your target nation before you had moved every possible resource into their borders? Would you make a first strike, before being prepared for a second? A third?
I’ve heard the argument numerous times that “They didn’t expect the reaction they’re getting; they bit off more than they can chew.” That’s ridiculous. You don’t crash planes fully loaded with jet fuel into national monuments and not expect to arouse a national fury. I’d say they’re disappointed that the body count is so low; that people had almost an hour to evacuate.
For the sake of national security, I hope that the military is assuming that the enemy has nukes, and people trained to maintain and detonate them, at strategic locations throughout the US.
The surest way to lose a war is to underestimate your enemy.
Nuclear materials are unstable. It means that the atoms spontaneously disintegrate over time. More exactly, an atom is transformed in another atom, “lighter” and more stable, and neutrons (and energy/radiations, that’s why these materials are dangerous) are released. These neutrons will cross the material. Some of them will “hit” another nucleus, causing this nucleus to disintigrate too, releasing new neutrons.
If there is only a little quantity of material, most neutrons will escape and only some of them will cause a new disintegration. For instance, let’s suppose that in a small quantity of uranium, 100 nucleus will disintegrate each second (the likehood of one nucleus spontaneously disintegrating is known, so it’s easy to determine what quantity of a given material is needed to achieve such a result), and that only 20% of them will hit another nucleus. Each second, 20 other nucleus will be hit by the neutrons released, and will in turn release neutrons hitting 20x20% new nucleus, etc…Ultimately, the spontaneous disintegrations will cause 25 other nucleus to disintegrate.The material release neutrons,heat, radiations, etc…It’s radioactive and dangerous to handle, but nothing more.
Now, suppose you use more than this quantity of material. It will release more neutrons and these neutrons will have to cross more material, hence increasing the likehood that they hit another nucleus. For instance, they will have a 40% likehood of hitting another nucleus. Each time 100 nucleus spontaneously disintegrate, 40 more will be hit, and in turn 40% of these 40, etc…Total :66 new disintegrations.
If you use even more material, at some point, for each nucleus spontaneously disintegrating, one other will be hit by a neutron and will disintegrate, causing another neutron to hit another nucleus, etc…You have reached the critical mass. As long as there is still enough material left, the reaction won’t stop spontaneously.
If you add even more material, each spontaneous disintegration will cause several other nucleus to disintegrate (say two) which in turn will cause 4 other nucleus to disintegrate, then 8, etc…You get an uncontrolled chain reaction, during which massive amounts of radiations, heat, etc…will be released in an extremely short duration. In other words, an A-bomb.
Of course, the quantity of material needed depends of the material (more or less stable, i.e. more or less nucleus will spontaneously disintegrate and releasing more or less neutrons during each spontaneous disintegration), density of the material (the denser it is, the highest the likehood a “free” neutron will hit another nucleus), pressure (for instance due to the explosives used to compress the material), etc…
And by the way, I don’t think the materials in Tchernobyl’s reactor core reached the critical mass. There was only enough of them to release a great quantity of heat (radioactive materials, through spontaneous disintegration, naturally release heat, and as explained above, if there is enough of them, the reaction will be accelerated, but not necessarily to the level of an uncontrolled chain reaction, causing even more heat), and they weren’t “cooled” anymore. The purpose of a nuclear reactor is to “recover” this heat, with cooling liquids, and then transform it in energy. It’s not different than burning coal to produce energy, actually.
I don’t think such a thing could happen in a nuclear reactor, actually. For such an event to occur, an important quantity of “pure” radioactive material must be put together, and in a melted core, there are a lot of materials which aren’t radioactive, and even materials which are intended to “slow down” a reaction because they have the ability to “absorb” loose neutrons.
I hope my explanations were more or less clear, despite my lack of mastery of the english language.
If Bin Laudin has a nuke why not wait until the pres and Congress are all together (like tonight for example) and set it off in Washington DC? One stroke and most the US heads of government are gone. But now because of Sept 11, the place is crawling with security. You have no chance of walking anywhere near the capital building carrying a 100 pound suitcase and believe it or not, with a low yield nuke, distance does matter.
Any attack on our ground forces in Pakistan could result in casualties among his own supporters. Mass killings of Pakastanis could turn them against him. Additionally once a nuke goes off against US forces, all holds are off. He has a better chance of living through this if he keeps things conventional. While his followers might be suicidal, the fact that he is off hiding in a cave right now indicates that he has some survival mechanism still functioning.
And getting back to where he’d get one in the first place; with his aid to the rebels in Chechnya he has no friends in Russia. While some Russian officers are strapped for cash, it’s unlikely they’d sell one of these things to someone who is likely to start WWIII. The seller would have no idea that Bin Lauden might not plant the nuke on US soil and who knows who would be hit by the retailiation in the immediate moments after that. It’s hard to spend the cash if you and everyone else on the planet is dead.
We can’t even confirm that Russia ever actually made such a device.
Pakistan’s weapons are far too large and at this point the government of Pakistan would be very happy to make Bin Laudin just go away and the nearest ditch would do. Bin Laudin has no research facilities of his own.
By all means let’s be prepared. But I don’t think he has one up his sleeve.
All holds are off… we no longer our holding our full capabilities back… Um… I know what I was thinking, but I do seem to have gotten my cliche wrong. Ah well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a chicken cross the road.
Okay, I don’t understand why that second link doesn’t work right - I’ve been fooling with it for an hour, tried c&p, and it still goes to the wrong page. If anyone wants to c&p it in their browser to read the article, here is the address:
A suitcase size bomb would be heavy as shit (to a person). Prabobly at least a hundred pounds. Nuclear materials like Uranium are very heavy and you need a certain mass to create a reaction.
Nuclear weapons require maintenance. Most nations have trouble building and maintaining them, let alone a bunch of uneducated guys in caves.
Nuking our forces would not instigate a nuclear war with the US any more than blowing up our part of NYC. The reason is that theres no point. Vaporizing Afghan cities with one nuke instead of hundreds of bombs dropped from B52s would still not solve the terrorist problem.
First of all, General Lebed is a VERY poor source. If
you do a real good web search, you will find he has
a habit of saying outrageous things.
Secondly, the reports discount the possibility of
required codes that lock these weapons.
Third, I am led to understand that such small weapons
have certain components that have very short half-lives.
This means they need high-level periodic maintenance.
Fourth, the “disappearance” of weapons does not take
into account the habitual overreporting of productivity
during the Soviet era in order to make production
goals. The “missing” weapons may have never existed.
Fifth, if the Soviets had ANY brains at all, these
non-alert devices would not be stored intact. Likely
the weapons and the physics package would be stored
separately.
Even if Bin Laden has them, it would be difficult to get one into the U.S. Not impossible, but significantly more difficult than just flying a few terrorists in with assumed ID’s.
However, there are a ton of private yachts out there sailing the world, and I can envision a strategy of sailing a yacht with a nuke into some shallow area by the U.S., then dropping it into the ocean with a marker. The Yacht then goes in to clear customs, and some time later a typical local diving boat goes on a ‘reef excursion’ and brings back the nuke. It can be done.
I doubt if Bin Laden has them, but I’d say the odds are certainly not zero that he has one parked in a city in the U.S. right now. How much greater than zero, I can’t say.
It is my sincere belief that if a nuclear weapon goes off in the U.S., indeed, all bets are off and that the U.S. will respond in kind.
While terrorists and “rogue states” may indeed have some of these weapons, the U.S. has thousands and the means to deliver and detonate them at any spot on the planet within minutes. If such a calamity were to occur, the U.S. response would be devastating.
I would honestly hope that the terrorists aren’t all suicidal fanatics, because if they use a nuke, say goodbye to whole regions of the Earth.
