Re: Fun with (In)Security

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:42:29 CST, Paul Schmehl said:
> > That's probably true.  The major problem that has to be overcome is weight.
>
> Right, but not for the reasons you think...  The actual critical mass is on on
> the order of several kilograms of plutonium, and not much more for U-235. The
> difficult part is in making sure that when the pieces of the core collide and
> it goes critical, it *stays* critical long enough to get a bang rather than a
> fizzle.

You get a gun (that's a real gun, not the popguns that it's legal to buy, 
something in 88mm or so) and fire one piece at the other; that's how 
Little Boy worked. I don't think it's rocket science.
 
> > The radioactive material has to be encased in lead. 
>
> Oh? Why?  Remember that it's not *that* radioactive - a few pounds of shielding
> in the right places will do wonders.  How *else* do they make a tactical nuke
> that's small enough to be placed on a smallish surface-to-surface missle?

Or in a 155 mm gun. Which means, about six inches diameter.

> Those things don't have more than a few hundred pounds of payload.  Sure, the
> nuke is a little bitty one that only pops a few kilotons - but look where that
> got some cities in Japan.....
 
Right. Maybe not a suitcase bomb, maybe it's a wheelbarrow bomb.

 ...

  ... mental picture of some guy trundling a wheelbarrow across the 
Mexican-US border, the bomb covered in strings of onions ...

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