Re: Safe Energy
Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Mon, 05 May 1997 19:02:43 -0400
John K Clark wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> On Sun, 04 May 1997 Michael Lorrey <retroman@tpk.net> Wrote:
>
> >A breeder can be set to produce excess plutonium, produce no excess,
> >or to burn up excess plutonium.
>
> Then it's not a breeder, just a plutonium reactor.
>
>
> >Getting the plutonium is one thing, but knowing how to build a bomb
> >that will actually explode using only 9 pounds is another level of
> >accomplishment entirely.
>
>
> Making an H bomb would be tricky, but not a simple A bomb, a Physics student
> working on a masters degree and a chemist with a little knowledge of
> explosives could do it, if they had the Plutonium. It's really not that hard,
> in fact in all the thousands of A bomb tests there has not been one dud,
> it's always worked the first time.
>
> A few years ago I had a sort of morbid curiosity about this, I figured if one
> was going to blow me up one day I wanted to know something about them,
> it's amazing what's available. "The Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee
> was very useful, so was " The Las Alamos Primer" by Robert Serber and
> "Mushroom" by John Aristotle Phillips. Also very interesting was a
> thermonuclear weapon maintenance manual, apparently unclassified, that I
> found deep in the stacks of a public library.
>
>
> >it [a breeder] uses plutonium at an enrichment level of about 40%,
> >half that of weapons grade.
>
>
> If you're using U235 then about 80% enrichment is needed before the bomb is
> practical, but if you're using Plutonium 40% would work fine, you'd need
> 11 kilograms of it, at 20% you'd need about 18 kilograms, at 50% you'd need
> just under 10, and at 100% you'd only need 4.4 kilograms. This assumes that
> the implosion is done crudely and the Plutonium is not compressed beyond its
> normal density, this is never true of in modern weapons so they need less
> Plutonium. The critical mass varies inversely with the square of the density
> of the plutonium, but a terrorist might be too dumb to take advantage of this.
> Anyway, enriching plutonium is Far easier than enriching Uranium, plutonium
> is a different element so you can use chemical means.
>
>
> >BUilding a bomb of the simplicity of the Nagasaki weapon requires a
> >minimum of 35 pounds of plutonium,
>
>
> That was over half a century ago, and far from an ideal design, for example,
> the heavy tamper was placed right next to the Plutonium giving it no place
> to build up speed. As Ted Taylor, the Michelangelo of A bomb designers has
> publicly stated, If you want to drive a nail into a board, do you place the
> hammer on the nail and then push?
The plutonium bomb used was not a tamper type, that was the uranium bomb
used on Hiroshima. The one used on Nagasaki was plutonium, and used a
sphere of TNT charges. Your original comment was concerning the lack of
security with so much plutonium around. Given this, one must expect that
those seeking to take advantage of this would be terrorists who not only
are not known for their technical sophistication, but also for not
taking proper safety measures. One would expect them to make as cheap
and easy a bomb as possible, thus the most technically simple types
would be those used. One would also expect them to poison themselves
with radioactivity while in the process of putting such a device
together.
>
>
> >as well as requiring the use of 48 Klystron switches, which are even
> >more highly controlled items than plutonium itself.
>
> Krytrons are used in other things besides bombs, in the oil exploration
> industry for example. The EGG corporation makes them, part number RN22,
> cost 80$.
Excuse me? SUre there are similar components used for explosives use,
but they have nowhere near the same tolerance level. Your 80 cent
component cannot be used for the detonation sphere of a plutonium bomb.
Those that are of proper performance are highly controlled munitions.
>
> >WHat is a cheap and easy way to make muons?
>
> Aim an ion beam into a target of deuterium or lithium.
ANy more specific data or info sources?
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/
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