A lot of times, I post things that are "controversial" or "upsetting" because I have a genuine belief that you all have the right to know these things.
Many times I struggle between your right to know and national security. But every single time I have come across such controversial stories, I have published them anyway, because I believe that your right to know overrides other such things.
This is one of those times.
I am publishing this story because of the difficulty it would be to get the materials together to create such a device. But here it goes:
Wanna see the technical drawings of the first nuclear device that was used in the Trinity testing as well as the bombing of Nagasaki?
This is a classic design that can be found most anywhere on the Internet. What makes this one special is that it's unique place in history.
Here's some technical specs about it:
1. Neutron Initiator
Theoretically workable. Polonium is a well known alpha radiation emitter. Alpha radiation is He atoms stripped of electrons and accelerated towards c. When polonium crushed onto beryllium by explosion, reaction occurs between polonium alpha emissions and beryllium leading to Carbon-12 & 1 neutron. This, in practice, would lead to a predictable neutron flux, sufficient to set off device. Widely known that once critical mass is obtained, in order for bomb to explode, requires fission initiation by neutron generation; this will do the trick. Polonium 210 specifically well known alpha emitter. Gold/nickel foil layer around beryllium is sufficient to prevent pre-reaction prior to explosive compression due to low penetrability of alpha radiation (can’t pass through paper). This allows for long-term storage of initiator.
The Boron-10 shielding is to keep stray (eg cosmic ray generated) neutrons from pre-initiating the chain reaction.
The polonium in the initiator has a short, half-year halflife.
The inner layer of the Be sphere is etched with grooves, these will create Be jets when imploded (shaped charge effect) which mixes the Be and Po very quickly.
2. Diagram
Roughly to scale. No easy feat in days prior to computerized drafting tools. Measurements located on table in top left roughly match drawing scale. Note archaic units (lbs): physicists after ‘50s probably would have used SI units, regardless of country. Also note quality of arcs (Fast HE/Slow HE) indicates is drawn by professional draftsman.
3. High Explosives & Miznay/Schardin effect (e.g. shaped charge)
Miznay/Schardin effect will work in this design, in all likelihood, though the additional layer of HE after the first layer of lenses is a surprise. Are the lenses strong enough to compress the second layer of HE? In any event, there’s enough explosive in there to cause the Miznay/Schardin effect, and enough aluminum to convincingly crush the core.
The outer layer of slow + fast explosives is used to create a number of converging planar shock wavefronts. The inner layer of solid HE is not compressed, but is initiated fairly uniformly by the many planar wavefronts hitting it. The uniformity of initiation is important to the compression of the core.
Also note the squiggly lines indicating compression.
Note also the “possibilities table” in the bottom left. This indicates several possibilities as to how much explosive is necessary, indicating that this may be an incomplete design, perhaps a pre-Trinity design.
4. Weaponization.
The weapon has a removable core, or at least a serviceable one, as evidenced by felt layers. This is necessary to allow the bomb to be disassembled.
5. Assessment.
This diagram is not really a secret to foreign intelligence services; nobody is going to be surprised by this design, just by the fact that it’s appeared in public. Open sources have speculated on these matters for a long time (see nuclear weapons design article in Wikipedia), and this just confirms that they were right. (The structure of the neutron initiator is elegant, and interesting, however.)
This is a crude, but effective, plutonium based design. Devices that are orders of magnitude more efficient are possible. A disclosure of, for example, the plans of the W-88 or a Russian equivalent, would be far more threatening, as there are actually real secrets involved there not known to all the NWS (the Big-5 + India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) or Virtual NWS (Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Canada, Ukraine, Taiwan, Italy, Spain…to name a few) intelligence agencies. After 1949 or so, disclosure of this would not have been a real threat to U.S. national security.
The real problem about building one of these designs is the rarity (at least outside of NWS nuclear facilities) of plutonium and polonium, as well as the ability to fabricate sophisticated high explosives to exacting specifications. We’re not talking about IEDs here. To build a nuclear weapon requires a state.
I doubt any of you have plutonium or polonium just lying around or you can't get it at your local drugstore (Back to the future reference for all you movie geeks out there)
So it's extremely unlikely that any of you will be able to make such a device.
As for terrorists? They are in the same boat. They can't get a hold of the material unless they buy it off of the Russian/Iranian/Pakistani black market.
With such material having pretty unique markings to identify where it came from, it would be suicidal for any of these countries to sell such material to terrorists. That's why I'm ever so slightly optimistic about the Iranian nuclear situation. They know if they gave such material to Hezbollah, they'd be sealing their own doom. Israel, or the US would detonate a nuclear weapon over Tehran and kill millions in a single flash of light. And I believe we all know that it wouldn't end there. Israel or us would bomb just about every major city in Iran and literally wipe them off the face of the Earth.
However, it's very unlikely, but not impossible, so that's why the world is concerned about nuclear material proliferation.
Travis
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