How two students built an A-bomb (2003)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science

by ken • 18 years ago

60 15 18 years ago

guardian.co.uk

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

Google John Aristotle Phillips.

He was a princeton student in the 70s who designed a nuclear bomb as a junior paper, and built a rather realistic mockup in his dorm. It was published and placed in the library alongside the other junior papers, until the FBI came and confiscated it.

http://europeancourier.org/terrorism_05_21_2006.htm

DabAsteroid3• 18 years ago

John Aristotle Phillips ... designed a nuclear bomb as a junior paper.

No. http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html#4

The effort by the Princeton student, John Phillips, was much more widely publicized. He made extravagant claims that his bomb would explode with a force of more than 10,000 tons of TNT. He took on a publicity agent, wrote a book, appeared on many TV and radio shows, received very wide newspaper coverage, and even ran for Congress.

What he claimed to have produced was a design for a bomb in a term paper prepared for a physics course. I spoke to his professor in that course, who said that there was nothing in his paper that would ordinarily be called a design. There were only crude sketches without dimensions. There were no calculations to support his claim that his bomb would work. He had collected a lot of information that would be useful in designing a bomb, for which the professor gave him an A grade.

Phillips was being called by media people so frequently that he had to have a separate telephone installed in his dormitory for that purpose. His professor told me that he himself had been contacted by many newsmen, but they never printed what he told them — they only trumpeted that Phillips had designed a workable bomb.

Several people have told me that professional government bomb designers have said that a design for a bomb by some student would work. I know that this could not be true because it would be a very serious breach of security regulations for a person who was ever involved with the government program to comment on a design that is available to the public. Note that the MIT student's design was judged by a "Swedish expert." With regard to such claims about Phillips' design, no professional could possibly consider a sketch without dimensions to be a design capable of being evaluated for performance. Science and technology are highly quantitative disciplines, but apparently Phillips does not understand that fact.

There have been numerous statements in newspapers, including our university paper, that any college student could design a nuclear bomb. In reply, I published an offer in our university paper of an unqualified A grade in both of the two courses on nuclear energy that I was teaching for any student who can show me a sketch of a workable plutonium bomb together with a quantitative calculation showing that it would work. My offer has been repeated about 10 times over the last 15 years. Three students turned in papers, but none of them had as much as 5% of what could be called a design.

All of this discussion has been about designs on paper, but as is clear from the above quoted statements by experts, that is only a small part of the task faced by terrorists. The fabrication requires a wide degree of expertise and experience in technical areas. It requires people capable of carrying out complex physics and engineering computations, handling hazardous materials, arranging electronically for a hundred or so triggers to fire simultaneously within much less than a millionth of a second, accurately shaping explosive charges, attaching them precisely and connecting the triggers to them, and so on. Where would terrorists find this expertise?

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

I apologize. Its a bit of a campus legend, and as such tends to grow in the telling.

I was aware that it had been partially debunked, but I was not sure to what extent. Thank you for the clarification.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

Very interesting. It's long been said that getting the material was by far the hardest part. I guess this gives the exact date for when that was determined.

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

I've read somewhere that you can get a very low-yield explosion by just dropping a big enough chunk of weapons-grade fissionable material onto another one. You only get several hundred tons of TNT equivalent of explosive force, but lots of radiation. It would make the perfect terror weapon.

showerst• 18 years ago

This is essentially how louis slotin died: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin

DabAsteroid3• 18 years ago

You either read or remembered wrong, or that source was referring to something like an explosives-grade uranium dart being dropped through one or more explosives-grade uranium donuts and from a great height. That method would not work for plutonium, which -- because of its greater propensity to prematurely generate neutrons -- requires the more-rapid mass-assembly method of an implosion.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... Today, the fear is back: with al-Qaida resurgent, North Korea out of control, and nuclear rumours emanating from any number of "rogue states", we cling, at least, to the belief that not just anyone could figure out how to make an atom bomb ..."

Interesting read. A greater threat today is multiple detonation of car bombs. Easier to build & deploy ~ http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.09-lebanon-shia-...

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

Isn't it possible for people who want the bomb to kidnap people like this? Unlikely, but possible?

Maybe it was a bad idea to declassify what they did in their lives, I mean in the interest of their security and all...or at least until they were dead!

staunch• 18 years ago

The entire point of this story is that you don't have to be Einstein to build a nuke. Even in the 60's there was enough publicly available information that anyone with an advanced knowledge of Physics could do it. Imagine how much easier it must be now.

On the other hand, we should be worried that someone will kidnap some Plutonium. That it is difficult to get is the only thing saving us. Not very comforting.

DabAsteroid3• 18 years ago

we should be worried that someone will kidnap some Plutonium.

Why steal it, when it is so easy to make?

it is difficult to get

Plutonium (even explosives-grade) is not difficult to get. All one needs is a uranium-fueled research reactor.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html#4

Another alternative would be to use a research reactor, designed to provide radiation for research applications rather than to generate electricity. At least 45 nations now have research reactors, and in at least 25 of these there is a capability of producing enough plutonium to make one or more bombs every 2 years. Research reactors are usually designed with lots of flexibility and space, so it would not be difficult to use them for plutonium production.

A plant for generating nuclear electricity is by necessity large and highly complex, with most of the size and complexity due to reactor operation at a very high temperature and pressure, the production and handling of steam, and the equipment for generation and distribution of electricity. It would be impossible to keep construction or operation of such a plant secret. Moreover, only a very few of the most technologically advanced nations are capable of constructing one. No nation with this capability would provide one for a foreign country without requiring elaborate international inspection to assure that its plutonium is not misused. A production or research reactor, on the other hand, can be small and unobtrusive. It has no high pressure or temperature, no steam, and no electricity generation or distribution equipment. Almost any nation has, or could easily acquire, the capability of constructing one, and it probably could carry out the entire project in secret. There would be no compulsion to submit to outside inspection.

However, making a plutonium-based explosive is difficult (from the same link):

The fabrication requires a wide degree of expertise and experience in technical areas. It requires people capable of carrying out complex physics and engineering computations, handling hazardous materials, arranging electronically for a hundred or so triggers to fire simultaneously within much less than a millionth of a second, accurately shaping explosive charges, attaching them precisely and connecting the triggers to them, and so on. Where would terrorists find this expertise?

Experienced and talented scientists and technicians generally enjoy well-paid and comfortable positions in our society and hence are not likely to be inclined toward antisocial activity. Recruiting would have to be done under strictest secrecy, which would have to be maintained over the development period of many weeks. Even one unsuccessful recruiting attempt could blow their operation. Moreover, a participant would face a high risk of being killed in this work. And if the plot were discovered he would face imprisonment, not to mention an end to a promising career. Terrorists would surely face severe difficulty in obtaining the needed expertise.

Flemlord• 18 years ago

"They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts!"

lakeeffect• 18 years ago

classic.

jimdesu• 18 years ago

My dad is a nuke engineer (studied under Rickover) who hires bomb designers -- he maintains that the physics behind building a bomb is simple and easy, and far from classified. What distinguishes the really scary weapons from home-brew isn't the science behind it, but all the engineering tweaks that optimize the results. Given his background and Q clearance in DOE, even if he wasn't my dad, I'd be inclined to believe him....

How two students built an A-bomb (2003)

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