[HN Gopher] The Apollo Affair
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The Apollo Affair
Author : Lammy
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-08-21 13:09 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| shadilay wrote:
| It is absolutely insane that the government is allowed to be so
| reckless with highly enriched uranium.
|
| Also worth looking into the origins of Pakistan's nuclear
| program.
| tgv wrote:
| Pakistan built their own uranium centrifuge plant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan. What that page
| doesn't mention, is that Khan simply copied the plan of the
| Urenco plant
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urenco_Group#Abdul_Qadeer_Khan).
| detritus wrote:
| Crikey - 93Kg of highly enriched uranium is enough for 4 nukes
| and would cost about $1.4Bn in today's money.
|
| 'Curious' that the US didn't move entire mountain ranges to find
| the stuff... .
| philipkglass wrote:
| It's more like $10 million in today's money, based on the
| $12/gram cost shown for highly enriched uranium in "UCOST - A
| Computer Code for Calculating the Cost of Enriched Uranium"
| (Atomic Energy Commission report, 1966) and then adjusted by
| CPI.
| detritus wrote:
| Huh, I'd've assumed it the other way around given the
| infrastructure requirement at the time, but your cost sounds
| a lot more likely given its provenance than the [now, i
| realise belatedly, unvalidated] cost I Googled prior.
| dboreham wrote:
| That's because they knew where it went.
| eh9 wrote:
| Am I wrong or did I just read that it essentially
| "evaporated"?
| detritus wrote:
| That was the _second_ 90kg of Enriched Uranium lost at that
| facility.
|
| The mind boggles.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Exactly. They couldn't not investigate, but they also knew
| where it went and didn't exactly want to dig too hard because
| they might accidentally find too much evidence.
| wgrover wrote:
| For a sense of scale, 93 kg of uranium would occupy a space a
| little smaller than one soccer ball:
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+93+kg+of+ura...
| throwanem wrote:
| HEU would be supercritical in that configuration, wouldn't it?
| wgrover wrote:
| I suspect you're right, so we can assume that it was never
| all in one piece or we would have known about it!
| throwanem wrote:
| Oh, I don't know. Lacking implosive compression the
| consequence would have been, not the sort of blast you seem
| to have in mind, but rather a "demon core"-style radiation
| accident. That said, it'd still be enthusiastically messy
| albeit in a more limited fashion, and there'd still be no
| reason for anyone to assemble the material that way - not
| least for what grisly example became of the last guy who
| took so little care.
|
| Still, as you note, it's remarkable to think of the density
| of the material - a soccer ball's worth that masses about
| as much as _me_.
| nyolfen wrote:
| i find the idea of 100+ kilos of some of the densest material on
| earth evaporating or being scrubbed off by mistake totally
| unfathomable, but i'm inclined to take the word of hersh. surely
| this kind of thing must have occurred in other nuclear programs?
| detritus wrote:
| With the Soviet programme, perhaps. Just by sheer scale, even a
| small % of loss would amount to a worrying quantity.
|
| All the other nuclear regimes around the world? Less so, I'd
| imagine. They'd be counting their beans a bit more.
| euroderf wrote:
| I recall 60 Minutes had a story about theft of uranium from a
| convoy in Pennsylvania, with suspicion of Israeli involvement.
| This story was back in the 70s. I'm sorry, my memory fails me
| about any further details. It might or might not be related to
| this posting.
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(page generated 2021-08-21 23:02 UTC)