OK this involves a “what if” that isn’t likely to happen but I wondered about it.
The idea behind MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) is that one side won’t attack the other because they knew they will be destroyed.
So if Russia send nukes our way, we will see it on our radars (or whatever) and send them to Russia (notice how the Russians always start it :))
I got to thinking about terrorism and suitcase nukes.
The idea is a carrying an actual nuclear weapon in a small case or something small enough to fit in a car and then having it go off.
Let’s say Russia sends a guy over here with a suitcase nuke and they blow it up in NYC. (Notice how NYC always gets blown up in these scenarios :))
So the explosion goes off and Russia says “It wasn’t us, it must be terrorists.” Or “It wasn’t us, it must be China.”
Since in this case the USA didn’t see any missiles or jet bombers flying our way, we wouldn’t be able to send nukes over there till we were certain it was Russia.
I was thinking, if I thought of this, so has the government and they must have some kind of defense or at least a tracking system to assure that if some sort of suitcase nuke or nuclear device that goes off, the origin of it can be determined fairly quickly, so we can respond in like. Otherwise the whole MAD sort of falls a part a bit. I realize MAD doesn’t collapse, it just takes a bit of the immediacy out of it
Anyone know of what kind of tracking we would have against this?
Though a suitcase bomb could kill thousands of people. It wouldn’t bring the US to the brink of destruction. So there would be no urgent need to perform a full retaliatory strike.
I believe, though my sources for this are a bit sketchy, that when ore is mined and refined, there remains trace amounts of various elements inside it. Different sources have slightly differing ratios of these trace elements. So by analysing these the source of the uranium or plutonium can be deduces.
I think the military could pretty quickly surmise that the nuclear device wasn’t delivered by a Russian ICBM, bomber, or submarine, because those methods would be detected by our defense systems. So if NYC suddenly goes up in smoke, someone will ask if there was any indication of an incoming missile or a plane violating airspace. When the answer is no, the logical conclusion will be that this was not an official, traditional nuclear strike by Russia.
But the next question will be who set off the suitcase nuke? The Taliban? China? Russia? Whatever the conclusion – probably reached by lots of shouting and conjecture at the Pentagon – someone’s gonna get a shitload of retribution. It’s entirely possible that they will conclude it was Russia, just using a more clandestine method of delivery.
MAD is a pretty outdated theory by now. It was all the rage during the Cold War, but not so much now with the Soviet Union gone and the whole U.S./Russia thing cooling off a lot. Now it’s pretty much – yeah, we got nukes, you got nukes, let’s not fuck with each other. A lot less of the tightrope walking we saw in the Cold War.
That’s how they did it in the movie “The Sum of All Fears”, but I’m not so sure they have a database with the isotopic composition of every uranium or plutonium alloy out there that could be used to make a bomb. I suspect the Russians, French, Pakistanis, etc… keep that info as secret as the rest of their nuclear programs. It could indicate manufacturing problems or even give an indication of potential yield, which would be counter to the idea of an effective deterrent, if your potential enemies know your limitiations.
A big part of MAD is predicated on the need to launch nuclear weapons before they are destroyed by the enemy’s nuclear weapons. A suitcase bomb is unlikely to effectively target the means of reprisal, so the need for an immediate military response is not necessary. We then move from the realm of MAD to casus belli.
Again, I am no expert, but in The Sum of all Fears the nuclear material was originally from American reactors so the American investigators recognised the “signature”. As I remember it it wasn’t the composition of the ore that was significant it was the isotope ratio of the fissile materials which - allegedly - varied depending on the type and operation of the reactor.
Not a traditional strike, maybe (to the extent that something that’s only been done twice in history can have “traditions”), but it could certainly be “official”, whatever that means. A Russian government that decided to attack the US most certainly could decide, from the top level, to do so via suitcase nuke(s).
If your intent is to kick off a nuclear war, then you’re going to start with a massive surprise attack, not a single suitcase bomb. And if you’re not trying to start a nuclear war, then you’re not going to use a tactic that has a high probability of causing one.
Well the intent isn’t to kick off a nuclear war, but you do make a point.
The thing I was wondering about is tracking it. First of all I realize terrorists WANT to call attention to their acts. They don’t want to do something and have someone else grab credit.
But the government must have a plan for tracking such things. Even if it can’t be done now, it eventually will be able to be done. Maybe not for 50 years, but if something can be done, you would think the government has to have a way to track it.
Like with the anthrax spores, they were able to track those.
I interpret that section to mean that the members of the ex-Soviet Union had radiochemical data on weapons grade fissionable material produced by their reactors. Given that 15+ years have gone by, I would not be surprised if that data has been shared with all of the major nuclear powers, as indeed I suspect that most of the major nuclear powers share this sort of data. (I also suspect that sharing security information such as the lower-level details of the Permissive Action Link system has also occurred) It would be in the established nuclear powers’ best interest to do so, so that any unexplained nuclear explosion could be ruled out as having originated from their material, and sharing information such as some of the details of PALs and their relationship to fission device design could also help nations secure their stockpiles from unauthorized access. (Other security details relevant to constructing multi-stage devices would probably not be shared, at least not with countries like Pakistan, who are thought not to possess such weapons.) I do not know whether it is technically possible to alter one of a country’s existing devices, in order for it to mimic the radiochemical signature of material originating from another reactor.
While radiochemical forensics won’t keep rogue nations like the DPRK in line—for one thing, providing radiochemical data such as that can let the cat out of the bag that you’re building a device in the first place—I think it would be a good start towards helping clear away some of the confusion in the aftermath of a terrorist nuclear attack.
Edit: An additional link for a post discussing nuclear “archaeology” and radiochemical/nuclear signatures from fissile material.
Since the advent of ICBMs, aircraft aren’t likely to be used in any “tradititional” attack, there’s no need. Alas, ICBMs are such a good delivery system, the chances of them being “tracked” are minimal too, things like “the 4 minute warning” are utter bollocks. If they launch, they’ll be here before anyone can really sit and go through the options available and respond.
So, the crucial part of defence strategy is, as ever, good Intelligence. Secret Squirrel will have warned the powers-that-be of impending attack, so in the event of any mushroom cloud appearing over a city one day, it won’t be too much of a shock - unless the Russians just wake up one morning and decide to attack, without any preparation. Chances of them doing that without alerting any spies out there are about zero.
The real problem would be if some terrorists happen to detonate a device at the exact same time as the Russians are making serious threats and opening silos (“for fresh air”). Even then, the first reaction behind closed doors would be “Why weren’t we told?” rather than “Nuke 'em back”, despite the latter being the only effective response given that the aim of MAD is to hit back with immediate, no-discussion, overwhelming force.
I think the big deterent in MAD was to have so many nuclear weapons scattered all over the globe and utilizing different delivery methods that a first strike would never be able to take them all out, and enough of the recipient’s nukes would remain to destroy the aggressor many times over.
I disagree. If someone detonates a rouge suitcase nuke in NYC it would be in Russia’s own self interest to help us find who did it. One, because they could lose Moscow with a similar suitcase nuke. Two, because the heightened tensions could go from cold to hot. Same with China and other “honest” nuke countries.
What do you mean, Cornholio? ICBMs take about 20 minutes to reach their target, and they’re far from stealthy. We’d certainly know their targets well earlier than 4 minutes before they hit.
I get rather infuriated at this kind of thread because it generally consists of people throwing around ideas and strategies that they believe they understand, based upon some sort of vague cultural knowledge, but haven’t actually spent even the minimal amount of time to have a cursory understanding of the topic. First of all, bombers are part of the “nuclear triad” of land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles, and bomber-delivered weapons, and the use of bomb-delivered nuclear weapons was part of both the American and Soviet plans. In fact, an entire class of new low observable bombers (the B1-B low altitude penetration bomber and the B-2 “stealth” bomber) were developed and deployed at the end of the Cold War to support high precision selective targeting.
Second, both the United States and the former Soviet Union (now Russian Federation), as well as the Peoples Republic of China, maintain both ground- and space-based systems for tracking ballistic objects in space ICBMs produce a very pronounced thermal signatures and ballistic tracks that make them the most readily apparent of weapon delivery systems. A ground based ICBM launch would offer a 25 to 30 minute warning, and even SLBMs launched from the Arctic Sea would allow about a 12 to 15 minute warning.
Third, and most critically, Assured Destruction (the “Mutually” part was added by critics such as Herman Kahn to produce a derisive acronym) is not a nuclear exchange strategy, but a deterrence strategy. In other words, if you actually engage in a launch, the strategy has failed by definition. There are actually a number of precepts to satisfy the conditions of Assured Destruction as a viable strategy in game theory that are unlikely to be realized, and even if they are the strategy is only marginally stable with two players, and completely unstable with three or more. The Soviet Union never advocated Assured Destruction in its own planning, while the United States adopted a few of the conditions but in the post-McNamara era never did not attempt to implement all of the conditions; thus, Assured Destruction as a plan of deterrence never existed between the United States and Soviet Union. The logical extension to AD was parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb as the the fateful “Doomsday Device” that the Soviets failed to inform the United States about (thereby invalidating it as a means of deterrence); in frightening parallel, the Soviet Union in reality deployed the “Perimeter” semi-automatic “launch on warning” system in the mid-Eighties about which they failed to inform the United States, creating a very real condition where any perceived attack (such as that averted by Stanislav Petrov) could have resulted in retaliation that would actually initiate an exchange. The necessary perfection in detection and response is one of the unrealizable requirements of a true Assured Destruction strategy, as is providing the other party of evidence to the accuracy of the system, none of which are satisfied.
As for the question by the o.p., the isotope ratios of the unfissioned products can be determined from residue. These ratios are a result of the impurities of the fuel products and the neutron flux, and can vary not only from reactor to reactor but in different locations within the reactor. For weapons of US or British manufacture, this is trivial, as those products are cataloged for both technical and security reasons. For weapons of other manufacture, such as Soviet/Russian, Chinese, French, Indian, Pakistani, Israeli, et cetera, it is to some extent a matter of conjecture. We can make some informed guesses based upon the general configuration of the reactor, but without sample products it is a matter of guesswork. For Soviet weapons we probably have more insight now than before the end of the Cold War insofar as we have purchased large stocks of weapons-grade material for conversion to fuel from the former Soviet republics and have doubtless catalogued those. For others, we may have some samples from atmospheric testing or espionage. The rest is purely guesswork, though certain contaminants in the available stocks of uranium to, say, China or India, may give us a means to trace the source of weapon products. However, the same could be true of independent or terrorist weapons, for which the basic material would very likely come from stolen reserves from established producers, as the cost of developing and separating weapon grade material is prohibitive for anything smaller than an industrial nation. For instance, in Project Sapphire, the United States covertly purchased and exported weapons-grade uranium from Kazakhstan; prior to export, the material was stored inside steel drums in what was essentially a barn with a padlock. Anyone could have sold this material to Iran or North Korea with no traceability.
Stranger, in your opinion, is it likely that the major nuclear nations already have exchanged data on isotope ratios in their batches of weaponable fissionable material in an effort to help combat proliferation of said material by being better able to identify the source of contraband? (Production of Pu-239 and HEU is a batch process, isn’t it?) It seems like the sort of thing that would take very little effort to do, yet would have desirable effects. And doing so wouldn’t, I think, give away any trade secrets concerning material production—I thought it’s fairly mature physics and engineering.
I can actually see the lesser nuclear nations—Pakistan, Israel—once they’ve made a weaponizable device, actually seeking to contribute data to such a registry, if only to remove themselves from suspicion should a terrorist incident occur. I guess that presupposes that such nations’ reactors are all known to other relevant nations, i.e. there isn’t a secret reactor/reprocessing unit cranking out Pu-239.
Re: Project Sapphire, I found Richard Rhodes’s account of the removal of the HEU in “The Twilight of the Bombs” to be quite interesting and was curious as to your thoughts on the matter. (The notion that the Alfa-class’s reactors were cooled by molten lead, as Rhodes claimed, was quite strange. Especially as the heat capacity of lead is a little more than a tenth that of sodium.) I find it difficult to believe, and have for the last 20 years, that the storehouse in Sapphire was the only one in the former U.S.S.R. with rudimentary security and mind-bogglingly poor inventory control. Or that the Alfa class was the only one the Russians chose to fuel with 90% U-235. I wonder if the storehouses mentioned by the Cockburn’s in their book One Point Safe were subject to a similar sale. Hopefully, they’ve been subjected to a thorough, ongoing physical inventory, as it would seem trivial for a motivated group to substitute replicas of non-weaponizable material (mixed Pu or U-238) for the weaponizable material within those storehouses. And you wouldn’t know, until you took a sample—not something I think you can do with an already-machined pit, though maybe they come with sample coupons—and stuck it in a mass spectrometer.
This is a common mistake with many metals. Heat capacity is per unit mass. However if you wish to cool a reactor, or indeed in many areas, worry about the heat capacity of an object, you are often concerned about the heat capacity per unit volume. Sodium has a density of 0.97, whereas lead is 11.3. The specific heat of sodium is 1.21 kJ/kg K whereas lead is 0.13 kJ/kg K. Normalising for density you get 1.173 kJ/litre K for sodium, and 1.47kJ/litre K for lead.
The heat capacity per unit volume is pretty much the same for both metals, lead being very slightly better.
The statistical mechanics of heat makes this so, the specific heat of metals being mostly related to the number of atoms per unit volume, not the weight of the atom.
Ignorance fought, thanks. That’ll teach me to opine without setting up the problem or fully looking at the units. Further, I imagine that molten lead, or an eutectic mixture of same, is a bit easier to keep confined in a coolant loop than molten sodium too.