[HN Gopher] A 1967 experiment that proved anyone can design a nu...
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A 1967 experiment that proved anyone can design a nuclear weapon
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-03-19 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.amusingplanet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.amusingplanet.com)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Doesn't everyone studying for a bachelor's degree in applied
| physics have to work out things like critical mass and how to
| avoid premature explosion?
|
| At least we did when I was studying for my Applied Physics degree
| in the mid 70s. It was not regarded as even slightly
| controversial that we should do so nor that it was especially
| difficult. It was simply one of the problems set in the nuclear
| physics course.
|
| Of course we didn't go into the same degree of detail as Dobson,
| Pipkorn, and Selden and our solutions would probably not have
| been as effective but that was mostly because it was the thought
| process rather than the ultimate result that was important.
| borissk wrote:
| We got extremely lucky that it's super hard to separate the
| isotopes of uranium and plutonium that can be used to make an
| A-bomb from the minerals that can be mined on Earth surface. If
| it was easier to do every dictatorship and every terrorist group
| like ISIS would build a nuclear arsenal and the biggest remaining
| city on Earth today would be probably 10,000 people.
|
| We got lucky with nuclear chain reaction, but who knows what
| weapons of mass destruction will become possible with further
| advances in physics, biology, material science, AI. A discovery
| that will make it possible for a small group of extremists to
| destroy the human civilization may be the Great Filter.
| hirundo wrote:
| > We got extremely lucky
|
| Or the strong anthropic principle is valid.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| This is not surprising at all. The first bombs were made when
| nuclear physics was not well understood, and the Las Almos
| computer, was a group of humans working in an assembly line to
| perform complex calculations by hand. These calculations were
| required to understand the interaction of the various pieces.
|
| A few decades later, the theories of nuclear physics had advanced
| considerably, IC computers were available for rapid calculations,
| the algorithms required for these calculations were present in
| textbooks, as were the results of many computations that did not
| have to be redone.
|
| Today, designing every aspect of a nuclear weapon, from the
| actual weapon itself to the machines and factories required to
| manufacture them, is even easier. The only real deterrent to
| countries building nuclear weapons are political in nature.
| Probably over a hundred countries could do it very rapidly if
| they wanted to, but thankfully we are limited to about a dozen of
| them.
|
| This is something to reflect on, when arguing that the spread of
| bad technology, especially one that does require many millions to
| manufacture, cannot be stopped.
| ianburrell wrote:
| One thing is that is easy to develop an inefficient atomic
| bomb. It is harder to develop one small enough to be delivered
| and/or thermonuclear bomb.
|
| Also, acquiring the material has always been the hard part. It
| requires nuclear reactors then reprocessing the waste to get
| plutonium. Or enriching uranium to get U-235.
|
| There is term, nuclear latency, for countries that could easily
| develop nuclear weapons. Some identified ones are Japan,
| Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia, Argentina, South
| Korea, and Taiwan. Japan is special case with 50 tons of
| plutonium.
| ddulaney wrote:
| I came away with a very different understanding from the
| article.
|
| > Back in the 50s, there were two schools of thought - that the
| ideas could be kept secret, and that the material could be
| locked up. Now? Well, hopefully the materials can still be
| locked up, but we all have our doubts about that.
|
| This experiment showed that designing the bomb was the easy
| part, but manufacturing is still a challenge. Even today,
| nuclear nonproliferation is largely about making it hard to
| acquire enough fissile material to make a weapon. Everything
| from the structure of anti-nuclear treaties to things like
| Stuxnet is designed around making it impractical to actually
| manufacture a nuclear weapon, even if you have the design.
|
| > Probably over a hundred countries could do it very rapidly if
| they wanted to
|
| Only if "rapidly" is measured in years to decades in any
| reasonable scenario.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"...making it hard to acquire enough fissile material to
| make a weapon."
|
| Which may stop becoming hard if country like Russia decides
| thar it has nothing to loose and will start selling.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Nuclear bombs are essentially unprofitable and impossible to
| use anonymously, so they aren't really analogous to most
| dangerous tech that needs to be controlled.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| The armed forces you need to keep neighboring rivals or
| meddling first world powers out of your borders are also
| highly unprofitable
| throwaway426079 wrote:
| You're right. But I don't think profit is everyone's first
| concern. The Kim dynasty needs the DPRK army as a tool of
| internal control more than it does for defense.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The benefits that gives them are very much a type of
| profit.
| jlg23 wrote:
| > Selden and Dobson proved that there is enough freely floating
| information in libraries and on the internet using which any
| technically-savvy person with the right resources could create an
| atomic bomb, and this include terrorists.
|
| That reminds me of a friend being raided by police some 30+ years
| ago because he published instructions how to create explosives
| online. He had copied some texts from a very old book that was
| not copyrighted anymore and, which he, a minor at that time,
| found in his public library. Fortunately, he never went to trial
| for that and his rather scientific parents were pretty
| understanding.
| [deleted]
| chasil wrote:
| It's astonishing that the barrier to entry for the Nagasaki
| weapon is so low.
|
| I understood that hundreds of explosives experts were involved in
| designing the shaped charge that created the compressed plutonium
| critical mass.
|
| Restraining proliferation was simply impossible, if the bar was
| this low.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The difficulty in making a nuclear weapon is in making a clean,
| effective, efficient, and high powered one. Making one with a
| relatively low yield is really not especially difficult. The
| principal difficulty is _merely_ obtaining the fissile
| material.
|
| Two hemispheres of accurately machined fissile material, a
| vacuum pump, some really solid steel tubing, and some TNT will
| make a bomb.
| atemerev wrote:
| Counter-proliferation is an active process. You have to
| actively block pathways to building nuclear weapons, and
| constantly run intelligence operations tracking these.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Are you saying that in 20-50 years we all gonna be peaceful to
| each other or nuke the planet? Is that the reason why we're not
| getting a signal from distant civilizations?
| mikewarot wrote:
| Designing is one thing... getting the materials is another. I
| feel like there are pretty good systems in place to monitor and
| detect that behavior.
|
| I, for one, don't wish to democratize access to nuclear weapons.
| Let's keep it so that only nation states willing to maintain
| them, have them. Maintenance seems to be about $10,000,000/year.
| atemerev wrote:
| Not "anyone", but "a group of nuclear physicists that could
| validate their designs against knowledgeable people at LANL".
|
| But yes, nuclear weapons design peculiarities and simulations are
| a sort of my hobby, and a very interesting one.
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