Al-Qaida's U.S. nuclear targets

WorldNetDaily ^ | July 18, 2005 | JOSEPH FARAH

[Fruit of the Spirit]

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Al-Qaida's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents.

As first revealed last week in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WND, Osama bin Laden is planning what he calls an "American Hiroshima," the ultimate terrorist attack on U.S. cities, using nuclear weapons already smuggled into the country across the Mexican border along with thousands of sleeper agents.

The series of attacks is designed to kill 4 million, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history.

At least two fully assembled and operational nuclear weapons are believed to be hidden in the United States already, according to G2 Bulletin intelligence sources and an upcoming book, "The al-Qaida Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse," by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams.

The cities chosen as optimal targets are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington, D.C. New York and Washington top the preferred target list for al-Qaida leadership.

[calenel]

Do I have to paint a picture? How many lightly guarded neutron sources do you think there are in the US? How many research labs, hospitals, etc., where the stuff is ready to be used? The day you hear about a theft from such a place - but by then it would be too late.

But aside from that, suppose you need 1 pound. Start with 4 pounds and you have effectively tripled the half-life. Start with eight pounds and you have quadrupled the half-life. Since the actual required amounts are significantly less, it gets proportionately easier. Po-210 decay products can be separated from the remaining polonium through chemical and physical processes when such separation is desired. Since the half-life of polonium-210 is 138 days, the hypothetical 8x supply would last for a year and a half. So the trick isn't really to get exactly the right amount, but to get enough of the right stuff so that you have as much time as you need for the operation. From Iran or Pakistan or North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela or China or Vietnam or France or South Africa or Libya or ...

[calenel]

Straw man. But just for the fun of it, solid plutonium exposed to air will not instantaneously rust or burst into flame or crumble to dust or evaporate. The trick is to keep it away from water and air. Gladware, perhaps?

[calenel]

"Therefore, I will tell you,. that you CANNOT use old, consumer-grade parts, like out of a tv or vcr, to make up the firing devices for the implosion assy. We are talking about SUB-MICROSECOND timing, here, and your Solid-state devices, like SCR's, are WAY slower than that."

Never suggested popping the plutonium into the vcr or the microwave. I have several solid state devices within arms reach that are faster than required. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. The processor in the computer I am on right now operates at a frequency 2400 times that. That is just one example.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Light will travel 11,784,960,000 inches in one second, or 11,784.96 inches in one microsecond, or 11.785 inches in one nanosecond. So, given that you have a carrier of consistent composition, say, copper wire (the propagation of the charge will not be at quite the speed of light, but wiil approach it) you can expect the charges to arrive at all the destination points within the same nanosecond as long as the carriers are close to the same length (within 11.785 inches if copper were an ideal carrier).

Furthermore, you can test your harness ahead of time to insure that it will deliver charges within a particular time span. You can also use redundancy to cover your bets. All that has to happen is that the charges have to arrive within a particular microsecond to insure the integrity of the spherical compression wave that shatters the initiator and compresses the plutonium. It does not matter if the electrical charges to the conventional explosives took 10 nanoseconds, 500 nanoseconds or 3 hours to get there. So you don't even need the 2.4 GHz processor except to test your harness. I don't think it requires thousands of volts at hundreds of amps to detonate conventional explosives such as were used in "Fat Man" but even if it did, is that really that hard? No.

"BTW--if you know as much about nukes as you say, then, you will know that the term 'dirty bomb' is NOT the correct term for a device that only spreads fallout, and no nuclear yield-- the term is Radiological dispersal device, or RDD. The term "dirty bomb" used to be applied, to a hydrogen bomb, which had a jacket of depleted uranium attached to the secondary, to increase the yield, while, at the same time, GREATLY increasing the radiological emissions,IE, fallout, and hence, the term 'dirty bomb'. a CLEAN bomb, was one that had an inert shell, like lead, or aluminum, for this outer casing, and did not produce nearly as much fallout as the 'dirty' one."

Yes, but the current use is any conventional explosive device used to spread radioactive materials. For convenience I appropriated it to describe a botched plutonium explosion where the plutonium gets blown apart before fissioning. But I concede your point.

[Thumper1960]

If it happens, we have the excuse to finally wipe out the enemy, by any and all means available. Nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional.

And, if a few hundred billion Chinese happen to get in the way......how do they say?..."..the fortunes of war"?

[Southack]

"But aside from that, suppose you need 1 pound. Start with 4 pounds and you have effectively tripled the half-life. Po-210 decay products can be separated from the remaining polonium through chemical and physical processes when such separation is desired. Since the half-life of polonium-210 is 138 days, the hypothetical 8x supply would last for a year and a half." - calenel

Not inside your weapon. What you are saying is correct for high school physics experiments, but it is incorrect for atomic physics packages due to purity issues. Put simply, you no longer have a pure source, and can't readily identify what is pure or impure (inside your weapon) after one half-life cycle has expired.

Your overall neutron emission rate will no longer be precise, as some neutrons will be absorbed or radiated at different times by the impurities that time introduces.

Plutonium 241 (commonly found in Pu-239) rapidly decays into Americium 241, for example...a problematic Gamma emitter.

Po-210, for instance, does an Alpha decay into lead...a neutron shield. So simply tripling your quantity of Po-210 can't triple your half-life (or effective weapon life) because you are introducing a lead shield into your fissionables in your physics package itself as Po-210 decays over 140 days!

The way around this natural time limit is *maintenance*. Lots and lots of highly advanced clean-room maintenance (by highly skilled personnel) who understand that Plutonium is pyrophoric, brittle, and oxidizes rapidly.

These are not things that are done out in the field. You don't distill plutonium out in the field. You don't machine it out in the field. Nor do you create meaningful supplies of Po-210 out in the field (you need a working nuclear reactor for that).

[Southack]

"But just for the fun of it, solid plutonium exposed to air will not instantaneously rust or burst into flame or crumble to dust or evaporate." - calenel

Sure it will...especially if your plutonium isn't perfectly clean...or isn't perfectly pure...or comes into contact with other substances in air...or is in a hot room. Machining even pure, perfectly clean plutonium in the open air *will* ignite the metal, for example. Plutonium, after all, is pyrophoric.

"The trick is to keep it away from water and air. Gladware, perhaps?" - calenel

Here's the DOE's bad experience from using plastic to seal plutonium from the air:
http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_3/3-2/pudanger.html
Much of the plutonium in the DOE Complex is stored as plutonium oxide, which normally consists of small particles. If not contained, such particles can be easily dispersed and inhaled. Plutonium oxide has the ability to adsorb (to stick: see Dr. Egghead) water and organic molecules on its surface. If the container (and thus the plutonium inside it) is heated, or if chemical reactions within the container raise the temperature, any absorbed water on the plutonium may be released, building up the pressure in the container.. Pressurization can also occur when the adsorbed materials are slowly released over time. In addition, the adsorbed molecules are subject to radiation from the plutonium, which can chemically break them up (the process of radiolysis; see Dr. Egghead). Radiolysis can also cause problems in packaging materials; any plastic in the packaging, for example, may disintegrate. Unfortunately, the DOE wrapped and sealed many containers in plastic bags in an effort to keep out moisture. A breach of the primary containment would therefore put plutonium in contact with the plastic. Radiolysis of some types of plastic bags releases hydrogen and gaseous hydrochloric acid, both of which react with the container material and the plutonium metal. These reactions increase the risk of fires; some of them also release heat within the container. Such reactions in turn increase the risk that the plutonium will not be contained.

[Rca2000]

Sorry, but WONG again. True, your Pentium Iv IS fast, in the GHz range. BUT-- it CANNOT be used,by itself, to trigger exploding-foil type detonators, that are used in precision detonators, (look this up,(exploding foil detonator) BTW) , and it needs an "interface', such as an SCR or IGBT or other high-power device. THIS is where the "Delay " comes into play. SCR's and IGBT's CAN handle the current, but CANNOT be counted on, to operate within NANOSECONDS of each other, when switching high-current, high-voltage pulses, as needed to fire the detonators. So, we are back to the old" need an esoteric switch," like a Krytron, which is extremely fast,and which purchase of is also VERY controlled.

And, modern , Small nuclear devices often use an EXTERNAL neutron-generator, a miniature cyclotron, sometimes called a "zipper", to inject the neutrons into the core.As the materials inside of it decay over time, it needs to be replaced on a regular basis, to insure reliability.

Now, I will ADMIT, that an old-fashioned, gun-type nuclear device, which is much bigger,heavier, and needs more fuel(you CANNOT use plutonium, you MUST use uranium, in a gun bomb, plutonium must be "fast fissioned"in an implosion sphere"),would be much easier to construct, but STILL, you need a neutron generator or initiator device, as you descrbed. The electronics to initiate such a gun-type device are MUCH simpler, than an implosion bomb, and THIS would be a more likely worry, NOT a suitcase-type micro-sized implosion bomb, that needs to worry about maintenance of the tritium, neutron generator, firing ckty, batteries,and so on. In such a gun-type device, you need a significant amount of highly enriched U235, however,and THIS is where the terrorists would (hopefully) run into a problem.

[calenel]

"Not inside your weapon. What you are saying is correct for high school physics experiments, but it is incorrect for atomic physics packages due to purity issues. Put simply, you no longer have a pure source, and can't readily identify what is pure or impure (inside your weapon) after one half-life cycle has expired."

Po-210 decays into an alpha and Pb-206 (stable lead isotope). Alpha particles would be stopped by any simple shielding making it easy to hide the Po-210. Having excess capacity would extend your time for constructing the weapon. Separation of the Po-210 from the Pb-206 can be accomplished chemically or physically just prior to use and the initiator constructed at that point. Not that I think it matters. Given that the purpose of the Po-210 is to provide alphas for the beryllium to "use" to generate neutrons, purity may not really matter all that much if you have excess capacity.

"Your overall neutron emission rate will no longer be precise, as some neutrons will be absorbed or radiated at different times by the impurities that time introduces."

Your neutron emission rate should (ideally) be zero until you mix the beryllium and polonium, at which point it can be determined by the relative concentrations of the two components. But it doesn't matter since the polonium gets purified in this scenario just prior to consumption.

"Plutonium 241 (commonly found in Pu-239) rapidly decays into Americium 241, for example...a problematic Gamma emitter."

What has this to do with anything? It isn't pertinent to the initiator, nor is it a factor for the plutonium.

"Po-210, for instance, does an Alpha decay into lead...a neutron shield. So simply tripling your quantity of Po-210 can't triple your half-life (or effective weapon life) because you are introducing a lead shield into your fissionables in your physics package itself as Po-210 decays over 140 days!"

As above - you separate just prior to use. Also, triple the amount would not triple the effective weapon life. You would need 4 times the amount to triple the time you would have at least the required amount.

"These are not things that are done out in the field. You don't distill plutonium out in the field. You don't machine it out in the field. Nor do you create meaningful supplies of Po-210 out in the field (you need a working nuclear reactor for that)."

You get the excess ahead of time from a working nuclear reactor, as I stated in an earlier post, or from a research lab or other source (Po-210). You don't do anything with the plutonium except transport it to where it will be used in a secure (air and water tight) container.

[calenel]

It is called "sarcasm" and is sometimes considered to be humorous. Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

[calenel]

All that matters is that the signal arrive at the shaped charges to insure that the compression wave is close enough to spherical to sustain the required geometry. You don't need exploding foil detonators or any of the other crap. If you wanted to make sure your bomb did not go off in the silo or on the bomber, and if you had the resources of a superpower, and if you were deterring other nuclear powers and if you had special needs such as the weapon being able to withstand multiple g's and to go off at a precise altitude, withstand shock waves and high intensity radiation or concussion, then, yeah, you might need some or all of that junk.

Krytrons and exploding foil detonators were not in use during WWII, yet atomic bombs were. I wonder how that could be?

[Doc On The Bay]

JUST DON"T GET TOO "COCKY!!"

Doc

[Southack]

"Having excess capacity would extend your time for constructing the weapon. Separation of the Po-210 from the Pb-206 can be accomplished chemically or physically just prior to use and the initiator constructed at that point." - calenel

That rules out all stolen weapons from the past. What you are talking about is the brand new construction of an atomic weapon, and even there you are admitting that extensive maintenance (e.g. chemical separation of Polynium from Lead) in clean room labs (e.g. no air, no heat, no humidity) by highly skilled personnel is required.

The nation of Iran is grappling with those hurdles, and the U.S. isn't shooting at the Iranian leaders, arresting Iranian scientists, or putting multi-million Dollar bounties on the heads of the Iranians (yet)...all things that we *are* doing to Al Qaeda. Iran has yet to overcome those hurdles. Heck, Iran's nuclear reactors aren't even ready to make Polonium.

To think that Al Qaeda can do the above while being shot at and bombed by the U.S., but that Iran with sovereign territory, large oil resources, and no one shooting at their scientists can't, is to deliberately over-state the capabilities of the enemy.

North Korea can't even carry out a successful nuclear test yet. Illiterates in the Afghan mountains certainly aren't about to cap one off before North Korea or Iran.

[Southack]

"All that matters is that the signal arrive at the shaped charges to insure that the compression wave is close enough to spherical to sustain the required geometry."

No, close doesn't cut it. The implosion has to be utterly perfect.

A California university recently duplicated a Georgia university's experiment in which deuterium acetone was blasted with ultrasound. That liquid then formed bubbles. The perfect bubbles eventually imploded while creating a neutron event (i.e. fission or fusion). The imperfect bubbles just imploded. No neutron event.

The difference between an imperfect bubble and a perfect bubble is minute, but it makes all of the difference between a neutron event or a non event.

[calenel]

"That rules out all stolen weapons from the past. What you are talking about is the brand new construction of an atomic weapon, and even there you are admitting that extensive maintenance (e.g. chemical separation of Polynium from Lead) in clean room labs (e.g. no air, no heat, no humidity) by highly skilled personnel is required."

You don't even know what you are talking about. You use the words but you don't know what they mean, and you apparently don't know the difference between polonium and plutonium. And I see that you are posting the same boilerplate b.s. on this other thread.

[calenel]

"No, close doesn't cut it. The implosion has to be utterly perfect."

'Close enough' is entirely subjective. I said it needed to be 'close enough to spherical' and even if that really means 'perfectly spherical' my statement was true on its face. There is no such thing as 'perfect' when it comes to man made artifacts. The requirement that the implosion be 'utterly perfect' is false. Putting aside your attempted obfuscation, what does the rest of your post have to do with what we are allegedly discussing on this thread?

[little jeremiah]

Just fyi, your first link takes me to the beginning of this thread, and the second link takes me to "this document does not exist etc".

I am reading with interest this debate (and others like it) and since I am an unlettered ignoramous and know nothing about physics, chemistry, or nuclear bomb manufacture, I have no informed opinion about either side. I can only try to gauge attitudes or motives, guided by simple mother wit.

Could you explain in simple laymans' language, whether you think it impossible or not for AQ or some version of it to nuke us with some kind of nukes either in the CONUS or soon to be here? Since others on these threads say it is impossible for various reasons, I'd like to hear your opinion. If you don't mind.

[Southack]

"You don't even know what you are talking about." - calenel

I'm not the one who has to shuck and jive behind after-the-fact pleas of "sarcasm" after being caught in blatant falsehoods. See post #106, among others.

[Southack]

"'Close enough' is entirely subjective. I said it needed to be 'close enough to spherical' and even if that really means 'perfectly spherical' my statement was true on its face." - calenel

No, this isn't "subjective" in the least. This is nuclear physics, of which you know nothing as evidenced by error after error in post after post.

Here's the public example that I gave that *specifically* refutes your uninformed claim that implosions don't have to be perfect, only "close enough" to create an atomic reaction. In fact, the implosions have to be PERFECT:

Purdue findings support earlier nuclear fusion experiments

Jul 13 ,Physics

---

Full size image

Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.

...

In the Purdue research, however, the liquid was "seeded" with neutrons before it was bombarded with sound waves. Some of the bubbles created in the process were perfectly spherical, and they imploded with greater force than irregular bubbles. The research yielded evidence that only spherical bubbles implode with a force great enough to cause deuterium atoms to fuse together, similar to the way in which hydrogen atoms fuse in stars to create the thermonuclear furnaces that make stars shine.
http://pda.physorg.com/lofinews5130.html

[calenel]

Your example has nothing to do with a plutonium fission reaction. So it uses a spherical implosion. Their so-called 'perfect spheres' are not perfect, they are merely close enough. But you go on believing what you want. Until you post something that actually relates to the question (an improvised nuclear device - look that one up) I am not going to bother with your nonsense. You claim I don't know what I am talking about, yet you have failed to refute my arguments, simply returning to plant your boilerplate propaganda on any thread that relates to this in order to disrupt the discussion.

If the best you can do is to provide a specific example (Purdue experiments) unrelated to the question (plutonium fission) in order to bolster a general case argument (spheres must be 'perfect') against the original specific case (plutonium fission) then you clearly have no basis for your position. Try proving your point, not repeating the big lie, Herr Goebbels.

[calenel]

"I'm not the one who has to shuck and jive behind after-the-fact pleas of "sarcasm" after being caught in blatant falsehoods."

The gladware comment was clearly sarcastic, but you must grasp at any straw I suppose. What blatant falsehoods would those be? You are the one spouting lies, and, might I add, resorting to ad homonym attacks here and there. No 'shuck and jive' here, but you are spinning like a top. Look, stop the personal attacks and post some pertinent links, or stop wasting everybody's time with your b.s.