I don’t think so.

i.e. the recipe is way more likely to kill you than lead to success.

In fact the “swinging bucket centrifuge” has got to be a joke.

I must admit I didn’t look closely at the hydrogen bomb url.

I think that the very sophisticated designs would not be used for a terrorist weapon in the USA. Getting the explosives right and timing their detonation properly would be difficult. I’d go with the gun design and waste the U-235.

The purpose of such a detonation would be fear and economic costs. Maximum efficiency would not be required.

Another important point is that a Plutonium weapon requires testing at least one or two – it gives the game away.

The design presented would almost certainly fail as a thermonuclear weapon, and probably fail as a fission weapon.

There are much better designs, published on the net, for fission weapons using the gun approach. That is the only approach likely to be available to a terrorist group unless it gets validated plans for an implosion device, and has the capability to build that with enough precision. You can do implosion on either HEU or Pu.

The gun approach wastes a whole lot of HEU, which is the hard thing to get in the first place. To have a good explosion, you need well in excess of one critical mass. The gun design achieves that by using a lot of HEU. Implosion can use less and achieve 2x or more critical mass with less uranium (as you compress it, the required critical mass goes down).

There is also the issue of triggering. Implosion weapons require precise timing of a neutron pulse to guarantee a fast fission startup near maximum compression.

In any case, this is all on the net in one place. If I were at home rather than in Belize, I’d have the bookmark.

Especially ominous is the possiblity that the seized plans were for an implosion weapon, because good plans make such a weapon much more feasible.

As far as the IAEA, I certainly wouldn’t trust them with sensitive intelligence. Such an organization is an obvious target for penetration by many different entities, and very strong tactics are possible (feed us info or your family dies sort of stuff).

I would not be surprised, BTW, if Iran is feeding them information and letting them inspect Potemkin nuclear faciities, or more accurately, real facilities that have an actual purpose of attracting an attack – for internal political reasons.

In the case of Khan, the cows have already left the barn. The lesson to be learned is that money talks big time, and there are going to be nuclear experts who will take it. Knowledge of how to build a bomb (and Uranium enrichment) is now how there. All we can do is try to stop the acquisition or production of fissile material by terrorists and terror supporting countries, and figure out how to deal with the North Koreans (which includes getting the ABM system up to reasonable probabilities of operational success).

There is also a potential for proliferation into Brazil (which previously had a nuclear weapons program that it turned over to IAEA), and Venezuela, as an axis is forming there (with Cuba) against the west.

Obviously it could not work in the same way and would be electronic,perhaps voice operated,that could analyse the pilots voice patterns for stress and notifying air traffic control.

Might just buy some time.

More out of the box thinking:

Make it easier to cross the border. There will be fewer people smugglers and the people that come in illegally will be reduced from crowds to individuals.

For the same reason I’d legalize drugs. It would reduce the size of smuggler organizations.

Think of this as a big detective strategy game. Blogos is vast neuro distributive computer network of growing dendritic synapse connections forming with mega parallel processing capabilities. This isn’t the exclusive perview of the gov’t, the Blogos can help in doing these little common sense excercises. Expecially when the govt seems to lack focus in these areas. Didn’t the 9/11 commissions come to this finding and conclusion.

AQ Kahn’s nuke tech can enrich uranium off the grid and out of site of normal IAEA monitoring processes.

The current treaties assumed those wishing to make a bomb would have to steal, covertly, or with permission siphon off from known stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Monitor these known sites and you can control who is or who is not in the nuclear club.

AQ Kahn changed all this with the poor man’s nuke. Enrich your own “yellow cake” or start from someone’s low enriched uranium (LEU) purchased for “civilian” nuke reactor purposes. Only the big powers had the tech to further push LEU to HEU. A difficult process. A Q Kahn made a “Chevie” version of what did require Cadillac caliber sci.

All you need to do is shield and insullate your centrifuges from view and sound. Then whistle while you work and produce HEU for small fision abomb. Granted small in the yield compared to hydro/fusion tech of the superpowers but still big enough to make the point and create mass panic in any US urban environment.

Now really you don’t even have to make a nuke just make a dirty bomb it will have the same impact and easier to move around undetected

For those of us in Southern California look at threat scenario laid out at:

link Here

Do a little risk analysis and target assessment using the Port of LA as a target and see the strategic hit the US economy would take.

Hint. This likely to come from land than sea. And yes, Michelle Malkin and others are quite right to be very concerned who might be slipping over the border in amongst the poor day laborers. AQ is very cunning and will exploit this PC weakness.

AQ is well aware of our great tolerance of other cultures and religions that make this country so great with its diversity. But at least during this war could we please be a little less PC before AQ rams it up our XXX where the son doesn’t shine?

The TSA still hasn’t thought thru the threat risk very well. They are still frisking old ladies with wire in their bras and having big debates about the propriety of pat down searches. The probable risk of any one old lady being a suicidal Islamfascist terrorist approaches zero. The odds of winning the California Lottery is probably shorter. AQ probably has noted there could be problems at the gates and will shift their tactics. But yes, Uncle Sam is still spending millions of our tax dollars to defend against a risk that may no longer exist.

A better investment of money is to do what Israel does in passenger screening. It asks several questions re where traveler is going. A terrorist is well prepared to answer questions about ID and questions along those line. But after several probitive key questions on travel plans they run out of prepared script and have to wing it. That is where they will trip up. Patting down old ladies may make everyone feel good but this is a false since of security.

If you want to consider real risks consider small aircraft or cargo craft with dirty bombs (FOX Series 24 Hours). Perhaps go vacationing in TJ and don’t enter via the US. Pick an outbound flight leaving TJ not bound over US airspace. HSPIG sources say these aircrews routinely fly with cockpit doors open. Low tech option wait until the aircraft completes take off roll. Run and gun cockpit. Take control of aircraft, and veer into US airspace. Then pick a target in the target rich environment in So Cal within 5 to 10 mins flight time and set course.

I will bet that even if we have hot F-16s on the runway at March RAFB or Miramar NAS, they could not intercept the aircraft in time. This considering the communication loop of air traffic control (ATC) realizing what was happening and making the appropriate notification to DOD chain and back again to pilot sitting on runway.

Just some out of the box thinking. I don’t think I’m telling tales out of church. AQ types vacationing in Mexico have profiled this already. I just hope our side has too and this is now a wash.

Ron

Khaddafi caved on it immediately when he saw what was happening in Iraq. He didn’t need Bush breathing down his neck too. Also, he wasn’t about to fend off the USA with his all girl goon squads. Forgive me if all of this talk of diplomacy being the motivation makes me puke.

Must be reasons we don’t hear much about that entire business. We went in, grabbed the stuff, sent it to Oak Ridge and the lights went out on the story. There has to be a bunch more waiting to be told. Until then, I’m sticking with my theory that Libya had it.

Thanks for the reminder.

It has been quite some time since I read the Analog article and my memory of it is a bit hazy.

The main damage caused by such a weapon would not be the blast although that would clear quite a radius around the explosion.

Since the explosion is near the ground the problem is that it would spew quite a bit of radioactive material around the neighborhood. In a word – fallout.

That was more or less the point of the Analog article. The bomb itself was a fission type using the gun design: plastic tube in concrete. The tough part was obtaining the fissionable material and machining it. I believe plutonium is not only toxic, but tends to burn when machined. Of course, some of these problems go away if you can get hold of skilled people who don’t care if they survive the process.