Posted on 12/23/2003 5:59:30 PM PST by mikegi
US/Russian Team Seize 37-Pounds Highly Enriched Uranium from Bulgarian Plant, WASH POST Planning To Report On Weds... Developing...
Obtain some of those radiation pills.
"One press report cited unnamed "American government officials" as stating that "about 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium are needed to make a bomb ..."
BE CAREFUL... I hear it can be quite dangerous to get a Libertarian to part with their highly enriched Colombian. :-)
I think the saying goes like this...... "You would rather walk into a Lion's cage with a pork chop suit on, than take a Libertarians Weed"
http://www.nti.org/db/nistraff/2000/20000880.htm
"This article analyzes the Bulgarian investigation into the 29 May 1999 seizure of 10g of HEU on the Bulgarian-Turkish border (see abstracts 19990470, 20000080, and 20000750 for earlier reports related to this incident). The article summarizes the incident, including some new information not contained in previous media accounts. Customs officers seized a metal container marked "10.0 g" from the car of Hanifi Okzan, a Turkish national who was crossing the Turkish-Bulgarian border en route to Moldova.
"During a routine examination of the car, the officers discovered two certificates in Russian, one relating to a shipment of uranium, the other to a consignment of "red mercury." When questioned about the certificates, Okzan disclaimed any knowledge of them, and said he did not know how they had come to be in his car. The customs officials then launched a more complete search of the car, and discovered the metal container concealed inside an electrical compressor in the trunk. Okzan then tried to bribe the customs officials, who refused his money and instead arrested him.
"During subsequent questioning, Okzan, who had been living in Tiraspol, Moldova, said that a Ukrainian acquaintance, whom he identified only as Igor, had given him the material, and asked him to sell it in Turkey for $400,000. Okzan then transported the material to Turkey, where he was instructed to meet with potential buyers in Ankara. When the buyers did not show up as scheduled, Okzan decided to return to Moldova, leading to his arrest on the Bulgarian-Turkish border.
"The article notes that according to Bulgarian law, the trafficking of small quantities of uranium is not a serious offense, and a Bulgarian court later released Okzan after sentencing him to a fine of 2,000 Bulgarian lev (about $900 at the December 2000 exchange rate) and two years probation. The article adds that Okzan "mysteriously" disappeared shortly after his release, and cites "unconfirmed reports" that he later died in a car accident in Moldova. etc. etc.
IE, something Russia probably gave Bulgaria in the first place. We'll probably find out that Russia's main beef was Bulgaria's failure to pay for it.
Just a guess...
However, Carson Mark, former chief of nuclear-weapons design at Los Alamos, estimated that Iraq could have built a nuclear bomb using about 12.3 kilograms of HEU, or half the official SQ.12 Thomas Cochran, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), stated that "a low-technology bomb in the 10- to 20-kiloton range would require about 10 kilograms of highly enriched uranium."13
A research team at the University of California (Santa Cruz) found that three kilograms, in fact, would be sufficient to produce a nuclear bomb. By means of computer modeling of a simple fission weapon design, they found a nuclear yield equivalent to more than 100 tons of high explosives could be achieved with only one kilogram of HEU and "a yield half that of the Hiroshima bomb" with five kilograms.14 The authors concluded that "one can make an atomic weapon with much less nuclear material than generally thought," and they proposed "that the use of HEU should be eliminated in applications in order to prevent the spread of small-scale atomic weapons."15
Almost as much as 37 pounds of feathers.
Since the Hiroshima bomb was the "gun assembled" format, one could infer that the "assembly" took place by firing an enriched uranium projectile at an enriched uranium target to create the necessary "critical mass" to initiate the fission reaction.
???
What gives? I thought Bugarians are supposed to be our friends, now.
Russian official sour about location of US bases in Bulgaria
US to negotiate location of military bases in Bulgaria in December
Bulgaria to Send Military Unit to Gulf
Bulgaria Says US May Move Troop Bases from Germany
The Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb; Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb.
The Hiroshima bomb was built around a 5" artillery barrel (this bomb was known as "Tallboy", remember, for it's long, lean shape). There was a "donut" of enriched uranium at one end of the barrel -- which weighed 85 lbs. The "donut hole" was the 55 lb "projectile", in the barrel of the gun. At ignition, the projectile was fired down the barrel of the gun, achieving critical mass when it "filled" the donut hole in the projectile.
Whereupon, it went "kaboom".
A simple and elegant piece of engineering...
The "Trinity" test at Alamogordo was of the plutonium bomb -- to make sure that the concept and design worked. There were no tests of the Hiroshima uranium bomb -- there was absolutely no doubt that it would work. The only unknown was the yield...
That tracks with a technical article I read quite a while ago which put it at "about 22 lbs".
That bomb had 110 pounds on enriched Uranium in a concave/bullet spherical configuration necessary to facilitate a chain reaction. The bomb had a 12.5 kiloton explosive yield.
The Nagasaki bomb held 35 pounds of Plutonium with a 32-part implosion detonator coupled with a Beryllium/Polonium injector in order to facilitate the chain reaction. That bomb also had a 12.5 kilton explosive yield.
Thermonuclear (fusion) bombs are another story altogether...
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