AN EIGHTH GRADE PRIMER ON "DUH BOMB AND YELLOWCAKE"

Without joking around, how hard is it to make a simple atomic bomb like the kind that blew Hiroshima away? Well it turns out that it’s not that hard. The only thing that’s hard is what they call “enriching” the uranium.

What does “enriched” mean? Ya gotta enrich it because all by itself uranium is only good for getting watches to glow in the dark. To make it ready to explode you have to get out the bad stuff from the ore. Enriching uranium means subtraction. You take the mined uranium and separate out the U-235, which is the stuff that you can blow up. U-235 is less than 1% of the mined uranium. When we first enriched uranium back in the 40s we needed tons of uranium at Oak Ridge in order to separate out enough U-235 for six bombs. It is this process that, while difficult, makes the rest easy.

When uranium is sifted, which means removing the non usable U-238 from the uranium so that you increase the proportion of U-235 in the mix, you will eventually have enough to make a bomb. Now you keep “enriching” the uranium until the proportion of U-235 in the mix approaches 20%—this is up from 1%. It’s at this point that some terrorist can actually have a real bomb that will go off, but the damage will be limited to destroying a city block or so and killing most of the people therein. So with a 20% U-235 mix you have increased the “fissionability” of the uranium by 20 times, the absolute minimum for a bomb. The more you “enrich” the uranium—have more U-235 is in the mix---the less you need in order to make a bomb. The amount enriched in military bombs is 90% U-235 to 10% uranium.¹

So job one is to get your hands on some already enriched uranium—the 90% kind--- so you don’t have to fuck around doing the job yourself. There are roughly two thousand tons of enriched uranium (U-235) stored around the world and Russia is the “mother lode.” Nobody knows how much highly enriched uranium is just laying around in various places inside Russia.

So let’s talk about stealing the U-235, because once you have stolen U-235 making the bomb is like falling out of bed. A bomb like the Hiroshima bomb just requires a couple of clumps of U-235 separated by a copper tube and when one clump is shot or dropped through the tube so that it lands on the other clump of U-235 (called the “gun” method) you have a big boom. In fact the explosion is so certain that this type of bomb was never so much as tested before we dropped it back in 1945. This is the type bomb we fear that small terrorist groups might get their hands on. Great animated graphic is here.

The other kind of bomb, or the real deal, uses plutonium (the one dropped on Nagasaki). Now let’s look at current events and yellowcake. Do you know what yellowcake is? I didn’t, and just assumed it was really bad shit that could do something or other awesome somewhere. Cutting to the chase: Yellowcake is an enriched byproduct of uranium mining which can easily be processed into plutonium that in turn can be made into a bomb. Yellowcake is important. It can make plutonium without expensive reactors and shit.

BUT Plutonium is a monster waiting to be turned loose. It is so radioactive---far more so than uranium—that just handling it can be quickly fatal. For the same reason, it makes radiation detectors go wild. Here’s what’s important; detonating plutonium requires a complex bomb design with multiple explosive charges timed to exquisite precision. In other words an advanced nuclear program is required to use it.

This is why the Joe Wilson Niger trip was so important. The purpose of his trip—to see if Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake----was crucial in finding out if Iraq had a sophisticated nuclear program. Handling plutonium is strictly for the big boys. In order for anyone to use yellowcake they’d have to have an ultra-secure place to separate out the plutonium and then make the resulting bomb. Joe Wilson really fucked us by not making certain the yellowcake was not sold, or that Iraq wasn’t trying to buy it. Sending Wilson was a major fuck up by the entire Bush Administration. Can you see how angry people in both the White House and the Defense Department are that this guy was sent on one of the most sensitive missions imaginable by his fucking wife inside the CIA? I’d have outed the bitch too, only I’d have followed it up by sending her into deepest Gangrapeistan without a cell phone.

Anyway, take plutonium off the table in so far as terrorists actually handling it. Everyone figures that terrorists will use enriched uranium and power plants are the source of enriched uranium is the civilian world. There are about 130 reactors powered by enriched uranium operating in more than 40 countries all of whom have enriched uranium just hanging around. It’s laying there. But typically the reactor operates on two percent U 235 (not the 90% weapons grade). So the U-235 laying around power plants is useless to terrorists.

Let us take a look at how a nothing country, or a bunch of terrorists operating within a friendly country can make a simple bomb when only “peaceful” nuclear tools are available. The first step in building an atomic U-235 bomb is to process reactor fuel—typically a uranium-aluminum alloy —into pure uranium. You can use nitric acid, which is cheap and available even in high-school labs. Even a terrorist chemist would cut up the fuel and dissolve it in a vat of boiling acid, then use an organic compound to isolate the uranium. The ideal compound for this is tributyl phosphate (TBP), although other compounds may also do the job. TBP has commercial uses, such as the production of plastics and ink, which might provide cover for a terrorist country ordering large quantities (probably in the hundreds of gallons.). Iran has a chemical industry and can probably make all they need.

If all goes well, the TBP should attach itself to the uranium and, like oil and water, separate from the acid. You stir, and you have TBP and uranium floating on top. The bottom is acid and aluminum. So you basically just skim [the top] off and all that’s left is to wash away the TBP. Given uranium’s low radioactivity, this work could be done in lab coats and goggles in a small warehouse. Then you just enrich away.

The process of privately building a crude bomb is made even easier by the fact that—unlike formal state-run nuclear programs which are typically held to strict safety standards—terrorists can afford to make mistakes ("Hey Abdul, be careful, we don't want to hurt the fucking Jew neighbors."). A bomb made from 100 pounds of 90 percent highly enriched (stolen) uranium could deliver an explosive yield of about 10 kilotons, or slightly less than the force of the 1945 Hiroshima blast. A smaller blast would occur if the uranium were of a lower enrichment grade or if the cannon (or drop) misfired because of design flaws. Even a one-kiloton explosion would level a city block, killing everyone in the vicinity and igniting huge fires. Radiation would kill perhaps thousands more. Mass panic would ensue. In other words, even a relative dud would be an absolute catastrophe.

This is why everyone is so worried about the enriched U-235 laying around all over. If you have that, you basically have a bomb. Every terrorist worth a dam is trying to buy some.

Now let’s talk about Iran, what are they doing? They can easily make weapons grade plutonium from “peaceful” reactors shipped to them by our pal, Putin. There is a myth that weapons grade plutonium cannot be made from "peaceful" ractors. A detailed debunking of that myth can be found HERE.

A great way of enriching uranium used to be the use of cyclotrons. A snitch from Iran claims they have forty of them hidden underground and ready to use right now. BUT this is very old technology. We abandoned them in 1982 and the French shitcanned them in 1986. It strains credulity to believe Iran will use such ancient and complicated technology. The new things are gaseous diffusion and centrifuge enrichment. Russia and Pakistan use the latter method.

So what is Iran doing? Chain reactions have to be controlled. Heavy water and graphite are used to do this. Do they have heavy water? Highly unlikely. An emailer corrected me on this. Iran is in the process of building a heavy water facility out in the open in a place called Arak just south of Teheran, and it is a place that can be taken out. They seem to have had trouble finishing it because construction seems to have stopped in March 2004, and then continued early this year. For all intents and purposes it is finished. A very ominous development. Thanx for the heads up. Everybody pretty well knows that they are going for the gusto. Do they want to make as much U-235 as possible? Sure. But plutonium (a man made element) can be made locally. This is where the peaceful reactors for “electricity” come in. Reactors make plutonium. And trust me, you can easily convert what is processed in a peaceful reactor into plutonium that can be used in the bomb. That’s why everyone is so afraid. The Axis of Weasels ain’t negotiating with Iran because they think peaceful use is in the cards.

So in an eighth grade way, that is the situation.

¹ One pound of highly enriched uranium as used in a nuclear bomb is equal to something on the order of a million gallons of gasoline. When you consider that a pound of uranium is smaller than a baseball and a million gallons of gasoline would fill a cube that is 50 feet per side (50 feet is as tall as a five-story building), you can get an idea of the amount of energy available in just a little bit of U-235. That’s why exploding 100 pounds of U-235 can level any known city. Figure ten pounds for killer portable bomb.