End of Surplus?

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 8:08 PM


<snip>
>>
>>A friend of mine was a weapons office on a USN sub, one day we were 
>>talking
>>about terrorists making a bomb.  He started by saying the technology is
>>above their heads.  My response was get a bucket and put enough 
>>fissionable
>>material in it and boom.
>
>   Sorry but that won't work. After the first couple of generations of the
> chain reaction it simply blows itself apart and the chain reaction dies.
> That's why A bombs have POWERFUL chemical explosives to FORCE the nuclear
> material together. Getting the bomb to stay together long enough to work
> (ie, use up most of the available nuclear material) was probably THE
> biggest problem in the building of the A bomb. Ultimately two approaches
> were used, one was to fire to hemispheres of nuclear materail together by
> means of a modified 16 inch navel gun (Tall-boy) and the other was to
> implode a hollow sphere of material by explosives that completely
> surrounded it (Fat-man).  Go read 'Building of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard
> Rhodes. It has a lot of detail on the subject.  That book and "Building of
> the Nuclear Bomb" are both very interesting reading.
>
>    Joe
>
>
>>
>>He said it wouldn't be efficient and you wouldn't no when it would blow, I
>>said who cares if you have a nuclear explosion in a major city that's
>>terrorism.
>>
>>
>>Randy
>>www.s100-manuals.com


Actually the reasons to use different methods are simple:

Number one and most important for the Manhattan project the amount of 
fissionable material available was extremely limited.  In fact they only had 
enough for three bombs.

Number two as you stated is efficiency, without either compressing the 
material or using a huge amount of fissionable material you won't get the 
"violent reaction" desired.

My point was at the time (before ever hearing the term dirty bomb) is that 
terrorism is not knocking down every building in a city but just doing 
anything nuclear.

While I said bucket I was not referring to a plastic bucket for building 
sand castles but merely any reasonable container to hold enough material.

If you put enough fissionable material together (more than "critical mass") 
the reaction will cascade to the point of exploding.  By controlling the 
explosion you can wipe out a city with the concussion, without the control 
you will spread enough radioactive material to make large sections of the 
city uninhabitable.


If anyone was to find all of the "missing" fissionable material and place it 
in one hole in the ground how big of a new hole do you think it would create 
:^<

My knoweldge is extremely limited, today if someone wants to look it up I am 
sure details on making an H bomb could probably be found.  But as I said 
with no knowledge other than knowing the simplest point is that once you 
have critical mass in one place it is a good idea to be anyplace else ;-o


Randy
www.s100-manuals.com