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Edited by Christian Lowe | Contact

Retro-nukes

Little_Boy_9000384_sm.jpg

Dr. Arms Control Wonk here. Noah's running around today, so I've hijacked the blog for moment.

Retro fashions don't usually appeal to nuclear weapons designers, save for the odd Members Only jacket you spot on some poor refugee from the 1980s

So you might be surprised to find that uranium -- which fell out of favor with US nuclear weaponeers in the 1950s -- may be the hip Fall fashion in certain New Mexican locales.

Over at my blog, I've started a discussion about a story John Fleck broke in the subscription only Albuquerque Journal.

Bob Peurifoy, a retired Sandia executive, favors dumping plutonium weapons in favor of low-tech uranium designs. Actually, Peurifoy prefers the current US arsenal, but Congress says the weapons labs should relax Cold War design requirements to build new warheads that are more reliable and require less toxic industrial processes.

In that case, Peurifoy says, you can't do better than Uranium 235, which isn't nearly as expensive, toxic or fickle as plutonium.

Although a simpe uranium device (above, right) would produce a relatively small yield -- on the order of tens of kilotons -- dropping one on Kim Jong Il's Pleasure Palace would still ruin his day.

(Special Retro Bonus: Click here for a retro shot of former Sandia, and perhaps future Los Alamos, Director C. Paul Robinson).

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Posted by: Rivrdog at August 16, 2005 08:51 PM:

"Retro, righto. Do any of our missiles have the throw weight? Certainly couldn't MIRV them. A B-52 could carry maybe two of these old gun-type nukes."

An implosion-type configuration for a U-235 weapon isn't impossible - gun-type U-235 weapons are just easier and cheaper to make.

But even assuming we were stuck with the gun-type configuration, late-build Minuteman IIIs can throw many more weapons than the three they carry owing to arms-control treaties. It doesn't seem impossible to me that say, a Minuteman SERV could loft three gun-type nuclear devices with no major deficit in delivery characteristics.

"It's a joke, right?"

Only if you're talking about arms control in general.

THAT'S a joke if you consider the bellicose, lunatic crap spoken by the leader of the host nation of the Treaty of Moscow. Not to mention Red China's deployment of a whole new class of Russian-designed MIRV-capable ICBMs.

Not to mention the series of nuclear weapons designed and tested by North Korea in open violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, not to mention the ongoing acquisition of nuclear weapons and an infrastructure for mass-producing them in Iran, something which they have no more been deterred in than has North Korea itself.

Jimmy Carter seems to have been earned the Nobel Peace Prize for making it possible for North Korea to get the Bomb; had he not done what he did on President Clinton's behalf in the 1990s, it's entirely possible that the credible threat of armed force would have suffice to keep North Korea nuclear-free. Instead, they now hold the trump card in the poker game of power in the Korean peninsula.

"They're hoping the world will go back to 35,000 # nukes so the islamo-whackos can't put one into a backpack and walk into New Yawk City with it."

Apples and oranges. You don't use a nuclear weapon, much less 35,000 of them, to deter a terrorist who professes to welcome death as a religious duty.

The world will soon be back to 35,000 weapons in any case, even in the unlikely event that all the signatories to the Treaty of Moscow obey it.

The hope, as far as I can tell, is that we can always exert enough deterrent force to make the people who PAY for islamofascism think about what massive nuclear retaliation would be like directed against their own countries.

Being the Guardian of the Holy Places would be an empty honor if your national capital and the rest of your major cities are smoking craters a half-mile in diameter. It isn't even necessary to threaten Mecca and Medina - just hold Riyadh and all the other centers of power in Saudi Arabia at continual risk of nuclear annihilation. All this would require would be retargeting a handful of existing ICBMs or cruise missiles to new targets.

Why?

The wife of the current Minister of Security of Saudi Arabia was among those who wrote checks to pay for some of her compatriots to do what they did on September 11th, 2001. I have never heard that this act was repudiated, an odd position for the wife of someone who at the time was Saudi ambassador to the United States of America.

The act seems to be conclusive proof that the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was complicit in the events of 9/11/2001 and all acts of terrorism against US citizens committed by Saudi citizens (who must have their country's permission to go abroad) since then - including the death of my son and all of his squadmates while in the service of the United States of America in Iraq.

This weekend, we were present as my son and his comrades were made honorary members of New York's 69th Infantry Brigade. One of the 69th's troopers was the medic in the back of my son's squad's Bradley when it was destroyed by three howitzer shells buried in the side of the road from their base in Taji, Iraq to an area from which mortar fire had been reported north of Baghdad. Once again, cowardice availed the enemy when valor never could.

If we could prevent another young man or woman's family from bereavement at the hands of scum such as the one who killed our son by rebuilding our nuclear arsenal, it would be cheap at the price.

All we have done by reducing our nuclear arsenal so far is to make ourselves a more plausible target for violence by those do not value life very highly.

By signing increasingly restrictive nuclear arms control agreements (which only we and the other true democracies holding WMDs - the UK and France - seem committed to obeying) we haven't even succeeded in our stated goal of reducing the possibility that an accident or the act of a madman would destroy the world.

At least twice - once in the 1980s and once in the 1990s - critical shortcomings in the Russian early warning system have very nearly plunged the world into nuclear war. In neither case would the provisions of the latest nuclear arms control treaty have affected the outcome had the Russians decided to launch nuclear weapons against us - except, of course, to reduce the carnage against their own country. For if the Russians have obeyed these treaties as faithfully as they did the Biological Weapons Convention from 1972 to 1995 (not at all), they are doubtless fully armed with covert stocks of nuclear weapons.

It's time to stop fooling ourselves. By pretending that all countries are as committed to peace as are we and the citizens of the UK and France, all we are doing is radically increasing the danger our three countries are in of falling victim to treachery. It's happened before.

Posted by: Vance P, Frickey at November 19, 2007 10:00 PM


The largest pure-fission nuclear device ever tested was made of HEU (highly enriched uranium) - a lot of it, admittedly, but in the Ivy Mike shot it yielded 500 Kt (half a megaton) and was deployed as the "Mk 18." Until thermonuclear weapons of comparable size and deployability were developed, the Mk 18 remained a major part of the US nuclear arsenal (when H-bombs with roughly the same specs came out, then the HEU in the Mk 18s was coveted for other uses such as ADMs, nuclear artillery shells, anti-missile warheads, or the 9 Mt Mk 53, where the HEU allowed "cleaner" primaries for boosted fission devices)

Posted by: Vance Frickey at August 4, 2007 06:24 PM


Hey, don't believe everything you read on the Internet. I bought one of those things on Ebay and took it out the the pasture (no city codes) to set it off. It wasn't nearly ten kilotons so don't waste your money.

Posted by: Chata Ortega at August 30, 2005 11:49 PM


Just do IT & store it for Use.
Test at NV Test site again.
Surface testing now?

Why not.

Posted by: stephen russell at August 18, 2005 09:07 PM


Environmentally correct nuke? Seems like you would need to fill out an environmental impact statement prior to setting it off and then run a survey to make sure that there aren't any endangered species or threatened critters at ground zero. Wouldn't you know that it would really lower property values? That alone would make it unpopular.

Posted by: remf44b20 at August 17, 2005 10:45 PM


An environmentaly safe nuke would be correctly named if used. Since there would no one left to enjoy, it also means there would be no one left to pollute. Maybe the garden of eden would return without anyone for the snake to manipulate.

Posted by: slanterp at August 17, 2005 06:02 PM


HA, HA! It is for me to laugh. Whoever heard (or cared) about a nuclear bomb that was environmentally safe? If there ain't no one left to enjoy it, then why do it?

Posted by: Alton Cason at August 17, 2005 10:23 AM


Retro, righto. Do any of our missiles have the throw weight? Certainly couldn't MIRV them. A B-52 could carry maybe two of these old gun-type nukes.

It's a joke, right?

They're hoping the world will go back to 35,000 # nukes so the islamo-whackos can't put one into a backpack and walk into New Yawk City with it.

The Sandia dude has been drinking the cooling water from his reactor.

Posted by: Rivrdog at August 16, 2005 08:51 PM


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