22 ms·

Fuel for nuclear bomb in hands of unknown Russian black marketeer, officials say

188 points by yurisagalov 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago
Also of interest is this table showing prior siezures (by law enforcement and government security agencies, I assume) of nuclear material, including over a dozen instances of highly enriched uranium (!) http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18849/previous-seizures-nuclear-material http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18849/previous-sei...
- zombees 11y ago
  Holy shit. Where is all of this being sourced? Is this all "fall of the Soviet Union" stuff where someone wandered into a silo and took apart a bomb?
  - agentultra 11y ago
    It is curious -- it's not like enriching Uranium is easy. It's a very expensive process with incredibly low yields if I understand it correctly.
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      The USSR and the US have enriched probably a million tons of it by now, the EU has enrichment capacity of about 20,000 tSWU which they used to enrich Uranium to about 4% (some to higher levels for research/breeders/medical plants). They are the 2nd largest producer of low and high level of enriched Uranium in the world, and also due to various security blunders also helped to proliferate nuclear technology. It's expensive but it is still done at very high scales, heck feeding a 1000MW fast nuclear reactor today require much more enrichment than running a weapons program. That fact was actually was one of the main "fear factors" in the Iranian deal, they have a huge enrichment operation however oddly enough it would not be sufficient to drive a power program. The part of the nuclear deal with Iran was actually a bit ironic because cutting down on their centrifuge numbers means that they could not actually sustain a "civilian" nuclear program as they will not manage to enrich enough fuel to keep any commercial energy producing reactors running. So while they will be able to enrich uranium capping their centrifuges (at what 5000?) actually means that outside of research the only other use would be to make a bomb. And this is simply because bombs don't care about time lines, if you are running nuclear energy you need to be able to continuously feed it with fuel fast burning light and heavy reactors consume fuel at a very high rate so if you can't have an enrichment process which can keep up with your reactors the whole program is pointless. The nuclear deal with Iran pretty much means that they'll need to enrich Uranium for 2-5 years then run their reactor for 6 months till it burns out and repeat which is obviously nonsensical.
      - venomsnake 11y ago
        Weren't breeder reactors solving that problem?
        dogma1138 11y ago
        Yes, but they aren't that common* , especially in very large installation pretty much since the 60's and 70's most nuclear reactors that were build were light water fast reactors. The advantages of breeders started to fade away when the cost of enrichment dropped significantly and when new stockpiles of Uranium were found, after the fall of the USSR when Russia became an exporter of Uranium it made them pretty much non-viable. They are still used to create medical and research isotopes, and Plutonium for either weapons or for nuclear batteries. Today there are 2 maybe 3 actual breeder reactors that are used for commercial power production. Most next-gen reactor design are breeders, or breed-capable (you can alternate between power-production and fuel breeding cycles) but none of them were built as of yet. *Pretty much all reactors are create new fissile material even in normal fission Plutonium is created in the fuel rods and about 30% of the thermal energy produced by a power producing reactor comes from PU decay and fission. But breeder reactors are ones that designed to breed fissile material from fertile material (reactor based enrichment) so they create more fuel than what they consume but they can't really be used to produce power at that time. Some reactors combine the 2 and they'll have a power producing phase and a breeding phase usually they'll have several cores and move the fuel around to either breed or burn it.
      - agentultra 11y ago
        Thank you! How much of that production between the US and USSR is weapons-grade? If you have links or books to recommend that would be great. Cheers!
        dogma1138 11y ago
        I don't really know those numbers (not sure if anyone does, and you know various treaties make any numbers published debatable because the official should be 0 or very close to it) officially they aren't supposed to make any new weapons and they have to disassemble existing ones and to dilute their highly enriched uranium stockpiles (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, probably some others too). Uranium enrichment is usually measured in SWU's that's separation work units which basically means your capacity to separate Uranium with 1 ton of raw Uranium as the feeding source. Basically to get 90% or higher enriched uranium you need about 1000-1200 SWU's which will produce 5-6kg* of weapons grade uranium from 1 ton of raw feed. If you have en enrichment capacity of 20,000,000 SWU you should be able to produce about 100,000 tons of weapons grade uranium per year (enough for about 2000* non salted/boosted bombs) As for books don't have anything on top of my head but this is a good source of info http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/uranium-enrichment/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/convers... The association of american scientists and similar organizations should also have plenty of nuclear related information. As I had to Google this earlier, and you might do it now, may I be the 1st one to welcome you to the watch list. * may vary based on your enrichment process * based on common publicly known weapon designs (50kg per fissile core) not sure how low an Uranium fissile core can get once you start getting into salting and multi staged fission. Edit: Just to elaborate on the previous comment. The difference in effort required between weapons grade and fuel grade uranium is almost negligible (this is why breakout is so easy for nuclear powered states). A 1000SWU on average will produce 5KG of weapons grade Uranium and about 100-120KG of reactor grade uranium. A 1000MW nuclear power plant needs about 75 tons of fuel per year (or upto 18 months depending on the burn rate), a bomb needs under 50kg of Uranium.
  - tyho 11y ago
    Perhaps they found a nuclear landmine and defeated the 1950's anti-tamper mechanisms.
  - dave_sullivan 11y ago
    Given this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_..., NK, Pakistan, India, Israel... To say nothing of the others... Every individual in every step in the supply chain is beyond corruption? Or blackmail? The door doesn't even need to be left open.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Israel is only "widely believed" to have nuclear weapons.
      - aburan28 11y ago
        No they definitely have nuclear weapons. Relating to this article is the fact that Israel stole and smuggled 100kg+ of uranium from Pennsylvania http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-united-states7056 http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-u...
  - noxin 11y ago
    A few years ago there was a report [0] listing weaknesses in the protection of nuclear material and smuggling possibilities. [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/12/how-to-get-a-nuclear-bomb/5402/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/12/how-to-get...
- hackuser 11y ago
  Dang (or whoever is minding the store right now): A minor concern, but something is wrong with the time on comments: * I posted the parent comment yesterday * Currently, it says "2 hours ago" * If I click "2 hours ago", the new page still says "2 hours ago" * If I click "reply", the new page says "22 hours ago", which seems plausible.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    In some cases, articles that the HN staff find interesting are reposted at a later date if they don't 'connect' the first time around.
  - dang 11y ago
    It's because of the experiment I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417. Not sure what to do about this. I suppose we can make the older comments keep their original timestamps and just be older than the timestamp at the top. That already happens when we merge threads anyway.
feld 11y ago
> Photos of the arrests show a policeman in a ski mask holding a Kalashnikov while Chetrus knelt on a sidewalk in front of the bank. He would eventually be sentenced to five years in prison. This guy is involved in the sale of enriched uranium and he gets FIVE YEARS?!
- x1798DE 11y ago
  It's not like he did something really bad, like illegally access a website.
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    Or torrent movies
    - lloydde 11y ago
      I read "torture movies"
- gh02t 11y ago
  Ten kilos of HEU may or may not be a concern, it's hard to say and I don't see the actual enrichment in the article. "Highly enriched" means any enrichment above 20% enrichment but below "weapons grade" (85%). It usually means something close to 20%... 10 kg of 20% enriched is scary but is a small fraction of what you need to make a bomb, so while it's scary it isn't necessarily that some terrorist group almost bought a pit for a bomb. I expect that has something to do with the apparently light sentence.
  - yoodenvranx 11y ago
    What about using this stuff for a dirty bomb?
    - arethuza 11y ago
      HEU isn't that dirty - nothing like as nasty as something as Cobalt 60 which is fairly widely used as a radiation source.
meesles 11y ago
I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.
- danbruc 11y ago
  With enough uranium and no expectation of high efficiency it is probably not too hard to build a gun type device and I think very well doable by a terrorist group. The tricky part is doing it with little material and high efficiency. And of course a dirty bomb is trivial but also not nearly as scary as often portrait.
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Yep. Implosion devices are tricky and require serious hydrodynamic engineering, but you could build a "gun" or "layer cake" type device without too much expertise. They have the added "advantage" of being very dirty (inefficient).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  It's pretty easy if you have resources. The hard part isn't building the bomb if you have weapons grade fissile material. The hard part is doing it without FVEY getting wind of it.
- forgotmypassw 11y ago
  Less terrifying as opposed to governements hoarding massive amounts of weapon-grade enriched Uranium?
- SEJeff 11y ago
  A dirty bomb would be trivial to create, but an actual nuclear device would require some serious expertise and hardware to create
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Just got through reading "The Dead Hand", which is the story of the end of the Cold War. Highly recommended for those interested in how it all played out. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PXFYPQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PXFYPQ/ref=dp-kindle-re... It's frankly amazing that this hasn't happened much sooner. The amount of biological, chemical, and nuclear material lying around the former Soviet Union, basically guarded by people with starvation-level salaries and no future, was beyond alarming. In fact, as bad as this is, the chemical and biological material was much worse. Some of that stuff could take out a city, then proceed to decimate an entire nation. Extremely scary stuff.
- mattkevan 11y ago
  Some friends spent time volunteering at a charity in Russia in the early/mid 90s. When they went out, the charity had just been given an entire army base. Everything was left except the weapons – equipment, uniforms, personnel files, the lot. If that's what a charity managed to acquire through official means, it's quite scary to think what others might have got their hands on. And my friends got some very warm hats.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    It was -- and is -- an insane period of time to live through. What concerns me is that during the last days of the old Soviet Union, they knew the jig was up. They knew it was all falling apart. So they started hiding stuff. Everywhere. Papers were destroyed. Chemical and biological weapons were taken out and buried. So there's one problem with "dangerous stuff we know about and we're worried that it's not being protected well", then there's an entirely different (and more dangerous) problem of "dangerous stuff we never acknowledged existed and nobody has records for where it is any more."
    - throwaway2048 11y ago
      luckily almost all biological and chemical weapons are not stable, and quickly degrade without sophisticated storage. This is especially true of the most nasty stuff (nerve gas, viral agents, etc), which can break down within days of lacking precisely controlled refridgeration.
madaxe_again 11y ago
So, when the USSR disbanded, many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want. In theory, Russia took the warheads back and looked after them. In practice, there was an initial period of everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing from silos, and the response was to fill them with concrete to prevent any further access. What then happened is gangs came in the dead of night with diggers and drills and unearthed silos, and took who knows what. My source is a lengthy chat with a chap at Pervomaisk, a Soviet missile silo in Ukraine, who used to be the guy who'd press the button (there are two buttons and two keys, but he explained that you could use the soviet flagpole in there to press the other button). Now he gives tours to tourists. $1 for Ukrainians. $5 for Russians. $10 for ex-USSR members. $20 for foreigners. $100 for Americans - or something like that. I laughed heartily at their pricing structure, before straddling the Satan missile for the obligatory "riding the bomb" photo. This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR, and wasn't limited to fissile material - Degelen mountain in Kaz, for one, where they not only dug up left over Pu, but also thousands of tonnes of radioactive copper (cabling used for remote monitoring, power, and detonation of subsurface tests), which made its way into the global electronic supply chain, and was only discovered after they installed x-ray detectors at Dover for scanning for stowaways. My original source for that was a British truck driver who was paid to keep hush and not talk about why he'd ended up with (mild, flu-like, had to retire) radiation sickness - but it hit the press a few years later anyway.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  > many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want. An important side point: Ukraine definitely wanted nuclear weapons, in particular as a viable threat against being re-annexed by Russia. Ukraine gave them up only after receiving a solemn promise by the US and UK that they would protect Ukraine's territorial integrity. "On December 5, 1994 the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Britain and the United States signed a memorandum to provide Ukraine with security assurances in connection with its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
acqq 11y ago
In the article: "The FBI has privately discounted Moldovan claims that radioactive materials seized in more recent smuggling incidents here were being sought by the Islamic State terrorist group." Everything's safe, then? Let's investigate: According to the Moldovan police presentation: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2449125-moldova-law-enforcement-slide-presentation.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2449125-moldova-law-... The person interested in buying was of Arab-Islamic origin, Yosif Fiasal Ibrahim, 1975, citizen of Republic of Sudan, Africa. Also, Sky News: http://news.sky.com/story/1565320/the-colonel-dirty-bombs-and-240m-of-uranium http://news.sky.com/story/1565320/the-colonel-dirty-bombs-an... "Investigators found contracts made out to a Sudanese doctor named Yosif Faisal Ibrahim for attack helicopters and armoured personnel carriers. There was a copy of Ibrahim's passport, and evidence that Chetrus was trying to help him obtain a Moldovan visa. Skype messages suggested he was interested in uranium and the dirty bomb plans. The deal was interrupted by the sting, but it looked like it was well advanced. A lawyer working with the criminal ring had even travelled to Sudan, officials said." There are extremists in Sudan endorsing IS, Reuters, 2014: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-sudan-islamic-state-idUSKBN0FT2WP20140724#BFd6gzMwl5Xkkj6D.97 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-sudan-islamic-s... Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#Sharia_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#Sharia_law "The legal system in Sudan is based on Islamic Sharia law." "Stoning remains a judicial punishment in Sudan. Between 2009 and 2012, several women were sentenced to death by stoning.[61][62][63]" FBI's and the article's claim could still be technically true (Ibrahim from Islamic Sudan, not ISIS) but it helps us being better informed.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  Why is this being downvoted?
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    because Sharia law is a non sequitur?
    - acqq 11y ago
      Because it surely can't mean that the environment can be stimulating for the sympathisers, supporters or members of ISIS?
onewaystreet 11y ago
If this group has had enriched uranium for sale for the past sixteen years you would think that they would have sold it to North Korea or Iran a long time ago.
- goodcanadian 11y ago
  I don't think North Korea or Iran have much need of a single bomb's worth of enriched uranium. They have far more interest in producing their own.
  - MrZongle2 11y ago
    It might be of use for a couple of reasons. One, you can compare the purchased material to that which you're trying to produce. Second, with the purchased material you can assemble and test-detonate a bomb, which not only causes other countries' intelligence agencies to question the value of their sources but gives you leverage in future negotiations.
rrggrr 11y ago
Unknown Russian black marketeer OR an unknown state's spy agency with a very effective honeypot for targeting and eliminating terrorist organizations? If the latter its a terrific self-funding operation taking some very bad people off the street. If you're going to worry about nuclear detonation then concern yourself with command and control of existing weaponized stockpiles. Stewarship is a challenge for developed nations, its got to be a nightmare for developing countries.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
elipsey 11y ago
It's kind of odd that uranium smugglers write each other sales reciepts and label the samples. It seems like something you'd want to downplay in your paperwork... "The guard found a receipt, written in Cyrillic, for the purchase of “uranium 235,” and then, after pulling apart an air compressor in the trunk, found a lead container inside with that label on it." Everything about this whole thing seems kind of implausible, and poorly substantiated by anonymous "intelligence sources." Kind of reminds me the Valorie Plame incident. Ahem.. I mean, we should all be very afriad, and obey the nearest authority figure!
- terminado 11y ago
  trying to find a buyer for 39 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium one kilogram of highly-enriched uranium for roughly $36 million $330,000 as an initial payment a small glass ampoule ... containing a blackish powder using genuine samples weighing a total of 5 grams as a lure dozens of such samples on its shelves meant to be the first of several shipments of highly-enriched uranium totaling 10 kilograms Doesn't sound like these are simple transactions. It's probably a bit of a horse trade to pawn off million dollar packages to people interested in murdering entire cities with nuclear fire. Also, I'd imagine a "receipt" in this case is not merely a set of carbon slips in salmon, canary and goldenrod. There are probably code words, used to mask meaning and ensure authenticity. But hey, you never know. Maybe it was just a coffee stained napkin with the following written on it in ballpoint pen: Dear Sergei, I.O.U. $360M - re: 10kg U235 4 bomb
AUmrysh 11y ago
If western intelligence knows about this and wants to get it off the black market, why don't they just buy it themselves? Surely the criminals selling it don't care where the money comes from.
- iSnow 11y ago
  Maybe it's just not true that there are 50+kg of weapons grade Uranium are out there, somewhere. Maybe it's all just a couple of grams that were specimens of production runs.
- lojack 11y ago
  > But no one in the West knows exactly who has this nuclear explosive material, and where they may be Probably because of this. I'm also quite certain that the criminals do care very much where the money comes from. Most criminals I know understand this is the difference between a pay day and a prison sentence.
  - tlrobinson 11y ago
    Surely the US has a few spies with deep enough cover to pass as arms dealers? Or have I been watching too much TV?
- dsmithatx 11y ago
  Exactly. This makes no sense. If we think there is a enough to be concerned about, we don't want a terrorist to get it. Just by the stuff. 3 middle man have been arrested for delivering samples. How about just hire some Russian mobster to meet with the next middle man and get it off the street. Seems like they are too focused on catching the current owner of it which seems stupid to me.
- x0x0 11y ago
  I know. Make a standing offer: the US will give a 110% price match for these materials, no questions asked, or between the US and Russian security services we'll do our best to shoot you in the head. Choose.
- 11y ago
MengerSponge 11y ago
I'm amazed that no one in this thread has mentioned Project Sapphire yet. It's my favorite bit of 90's spycraft. Project Sapphire Wikipedia Entry: Project Sapphire was a successful 1994 covert operation of the United States government in cooperation with the Kazakhstan government to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. A warehouse at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant outside Ust-Kamenogorsk housed 1,322 pounds (600 kg) of weapons grade enriched uranium to fuel Alfa class submarines (90% U-235). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fuel was poorly documented and secured, and in danger of being sold for use in the construction of nuclear weapons. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002881.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09... http://www.y12.doe.gov/news/report/project-sapphire-today http://www.y12.doe.gov/news/report/project-sapphire-today
- smacktoward 11y ago
  Thank you! I remembered reading this story in the Post years ago, but couldn't remember the name of the operation so my Google-fu was insufficient to dig it up. Glad you shared it.
godgod 11y ago
If the US govt hadn't lied to us for the past few decades, I'd tend to give them the benefit of doubt here, but something tells me this is more US propaganda. I hate having to say that about my own govt but they have motives to make Russia look like the bad guy in every regard.
api 11y ago
I don't mean to engage in conspiranoia here (and I highly doubt there's an overt conspiratorial explanation), but right now I'm finding 'murmurs' like this especially alarming. When I look back at history, it seems like major economic turmoil is very often followed by outbreaks of major warfare or at the very least significant flirtations with major conflict. The Great Depression was followed by WWII, the decline toward the end of the 60s by the hottest period of Vietnam, the dot.com crash by 9/11 and Iraq, and the 2008 crash by the Ukraine crisis and what seems to have been a near miss between the USA, Russia, and possibly other powers. 2008 was also followed fairly shortly by the rise of ISIS and a re-heating of Iraq and its general region. We're hearing a lot about an impending emerging market debt crisis, and we know China has gone to 'heroic' efforts to backstop its stock market and real estate markets against the first stages of what appeared to be an unfolding crash. It's entirely possible that another economic crisis is brewing in China and other 'emerging' markets, and it could be a bad one. If that's the case at some point it will exceed the ability of even China's autocracy to prevent it with currency and market manipulations. As I led off with above, I doubt that there's an overt decision that happens. I doubt anyone says 'well, the economy's down so we better have a war!' Instead I suspect it's a bit like tectonic plates. When an economic crash happens it exacerbates stresses that are already present in the system and quite likely pushes some people and/or state actors over the edge. People often behave more desperately and irrationally under economic stress; you can see this in the willingness of former Soviet officials to actually distribute such deadly material during the waning days of the USSR. Not being able to eat is a powerful motivator. Edit: not deleting this, but I hate to have posted it hours before hearing about Paris.

188 points by yurisagalov 11y ago

Also of interest is this table showing prior siezures (by law enforcement and government security agencies, I assume) of nuclear material, including over a dozen instances of highly enriched uranium (!) http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18849/previous-seizures-nuclear-material http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18849/previous-sei...

zombees 11y ago
Holy shit. Where is all of this being sourced? Is this all "fall of the Soviet Union" stuff where someone wandered into a silo and took apart a bomb?
- agentultra 11y ago
  It is curious -- it's not like enriching Uranium is easy. It's a very expensive process with incredibly low yields if I understand it correctly.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    The USSR and the US have enriched probably a million tons of it by now, the EU has enrichment capacity of about 20,000 tSWU which they used to enrich Uranium to about 4% (some to higher levels for research/breeders/medical plants). They are the 2nd largest producer of low and high level of enriched Uranium in the world, and also due to various security blunders also helped to proliferate nuclear technology. It's expensive but it is still done at very high scales, heck feeding a 1000MW fast nuclear reactor today require much more enrichment than running a weapons program. That fact was actually was one of the main "fear factors" in the Iranian deal, they have a huge enrichment operation however oddly enough it would not be sufficient to drive a power program. The part of the nuclear deal with Iran was actually a bit ironic because cutting down on their centrifuge numbers means that they could not actually sustain a "civilian" nuclear program as they will not manage to enrich enough fuel to keep any commercial energy producing reactors running. So while they will be able to enrich uranium capping their centrifuges (at what 5000?) actually means that outside of research the only other use would be to make a bomb. And this is simply because bombs don't care about time lines, if you are running nuclear energy you need to be able to continuously feed it with fuel fast burning light and heavy reactors consume fuel at a very high rate so if you can't have an enrichment process which can keep up with your reactors the whole program is pointless. The nuclear deal with Iran pretty much means that they'll need to enrich Uranium for 2-5 years then run their reactor for 6 months till it burns out and repeat which is obviously nonsensical.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Weren't breeder reactors solving that problem?
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Yes, but they aren't that common* , especially in very large installation pretty much since the 60's and 70's most nuclear reactors that were build were light water fast reactors. The advantages of breeders started to fade away when the cost of enrichment dropped significantly and when new stockpiles of Uranium were found, after the fall of the USSR when Russia became an exporter of Uranium it made them pretty much non-viable. They are still used to create medical and research isotopes, and Plutonium for either weapons or for nuclear batteries. Today there are 2 maybe 3 actual breeder reactors that are used for commercial power production. Most next-gen reactor design are breeders, or breed-capable (you can alternate between power-production and fuel breeding cycles) but none of them were built as of yet. *Pretty much all reactors are create new fissile material even in normal fission Plutonium is created in the fuel rods and about 30% of the thermal energy produced by a power producing reactor comes from PU decay and fission. But breeder reactors are ones that designed to breed fissile material from fertile material (reactor based enrichment) so they create more fuel than what they consume but they can't really be used to produce power at that time. Some reactors combine the 2 and they'll have a power producing phase and a breeding phase usually they'll have several cores and move the fuel around to either breed or burn it.
    - agentultra 11y ago
      Thank you! How much of that production between the US and USSR is weapons-grade? If you have links or books to recommend that would be great. Cheers!
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        I don't really know those numbers (not sure if anyone does, and you know various treaties make any numbers published debatable because the official should be 0 or very close to it) officially they aren't supposed to make any new weapons and they have to disassemble existing ones and to dilute their highly enriched uranium stockpiles (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, probably some others too). Uranium enrichment is usually measured in SWU's that's separation work units which basically means your capacity to separate Uranium with 1 ton of raw Uranium as the feeding source. Basically to get 90% or higher enriched uranium you need about 1000-1200 SWU's which will produce 5-6kg* of weapons grade uranium from 1 ton of raw feed. If you have en enrichment capacity of 20,000,000 SWU you should be able to produce about 100,000 tons of weapons grade uranium per year (enough for about 2000* non salted/boosted bombs) As for books don't have anything on top of my head but this is a good source of info http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/uranium-enrichment/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/convers... The association of american scientists and similar organizations should also have plenty of nuclear related information. As I had to Google this earlier, and you might do it now, may I be the 1st one to welcome you to the watch list. * may vary based on your enrichment process * based on common publicly known weapon designs (50kg per fissile core) not sure how low an Uranium fissile core can get once you start getting into salting and multi staged fission. Edit: Just to elaborate on the previous comment. The difference in effort required between weapons grade and fuel grade uranium is almost negligible (this is why breakout is so easy for nuclear powered states). A 1000SWU on average will produce 5KG of weapons grade Uranium and about 100-120KG of reactor grade uranium. A 1000MW nuclear power plant needs about 75 tons of fuel per year (or upto 18 months depending on the burn rate), a bomb needs under 50kg of Uranium.
- tyho 11y ago
  Perhaps they found a nuclear landmine and defeated the 1950's anti-tamper mechanisms.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  Given this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_..., NK, Pakistan, India, Israel... To say nothing of the others... Every individual in every step in the supply chain is beyond corruption? Or blackmail? The door doesn't even need to be left open.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Israel is only "widely believed" to have nuclear weapons.
    - aburan28 11y ago
      No they definitely have nuclear weapons. Relating to this article is the fact that Israel stole and smuggled 100kg+ of uranium from Pennsylvania http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-united-states7056 http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-u...
- noxin 11y ago
  A few years ago there was a report [0] listing weaknesses in the protection of nuclear material and smuggling possibilities. [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/12/how-to-get-a-nuclear-bomb/5402/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/12/how-to-get...
hackuser 11y ago
Dang (or whoever is minding the store right now): A minor concern, but something is wrong with the time on comments: * I posted the parent comment yesterday * Currently, it says "2 hours ago" * If I click "2 hours ago", the new page still says "2 hours ago" * If I click "reply", the new page says "22 hours ago", which seems plausible.
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  In some cases, articles that the HN staff find interesting are reposted at a later date if they don't 'connect' the first time around.
- dang 11y ago
  It's because of the experiment I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537417. Not sure what to do about this. I suppose we can make the older comments keep their original timestamps and just be older than the timestamp at the top. That already happens when we merge threads anyway.

feld 11y ago

> Photos of the arrests show a policeman in a ski mask holding a Kalashnikov while Chetrus knelt on a sidewalk in front of the bank. He would eventually be sentenced to five years in prison. This guy is involved in the sale of enriched uranium and he gets FIVE YEARS?!

x1798DE 11y ago
It's not like he did something really bad, like illegally access a website.
- SEJeff 11y ago
  Or torrent movies
  - lloydde 11y ago
    I read "torture movies"
gh02t 11y ago
Ten kilos of HEU may or may not be a concern, it's hard to say and I don't see the actual enrichment in the article. "Highly enriched" means any enrichment above 20% enrichment but below "weapons grade" (85%). It usually means something close to 20%... 10 kg of 20% enriched is scary but is a small fraction of what you need to make a bomb, so while it's scary it isn't necessarily that some terrorist group almost bought a pit for a bomb. I expect that has something to do with the apparently light sentence.
- yoodenvranx 11y ago
  What about using this stuff for a dirty bomb?
  - arethuza 11y ago
    HEU isn't that dirty - nothing like as nasty as something as Cobalt 60 which is fairly widely used as a radiation source.

meesles 11y ago

I'm interested in how technically difficult building an actual nuclear weapon would be if you got your hands on one of these samples. The idea that crazy islamic extremists could one day get their hands on this uranium and cause significant, extended damage is truly terrifying.

danbruc 11y ago
With enough uranium and no expectation of high efficiency it is probably not too hard to build a gun type device and I think very well doable by a terrorist group. The tricky part is doing it with little material and high efficiency. And of course a dirty bomb is trivial but also not nearly as scary as often portrait.
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Yep. Implosion devices are tricky and require serious hydrodynamic engineering, but you could build a "gun" or "layer cake" type device without too much expertise. They have the added "advantage" of being very dirty (inefficient).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
3pt14159 11y ago
It's pretty easy if you have resources. The hard part isn't building the bomb if you have weapons grade fissile material. The hard part is doing it without FVEY getting wind of it.
forgotmypassw 11y ago
Less terrifying as opposed to governements hoarding massive amounts of weapon-grade enriched Uranium?
SEJeff 11y ago
A dirty bomb would be trivial to create, but an actual nuclear device would require some serious expertise and hardware to create

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Just got through reading "The Dead Hand", which is the story of the end of the Cold War. Highly recommended for those interested in how it all played out. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PXFYPQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PXFYPQ/ref=dp-kindle-re... It's frankly amazing that this hasn't happened much sooner. The amount of biological, chemical, and nuclear material lying around the former Soviet Union, basically guarded by people with starvation-level salaries and no future, was beyond alarming. In fact, as bad as this is, the chemical and biological material was much worse. Some of that stuff could take out a city, then proceed to decimate an entire nation. Extremely scary stuff.

mattkevan 11y ago
Some friends spent time volunteering at a charity in Russia in the early/mid 90s. When they went out, the charity had just been given an entire army base. Everything was left except the weapons – equipment, uniforms, personnel files, the lot. If that's what a charity managed to acquire through official means, it's quite scary to think what others might have got their hands on. And my friends got some very warm hats.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  It was -- and is -- an insane period of time to live through. What concerns me is that during the last days of the old Soviet Union, they knew the jig was up. They knew it was all falling apart. So they started hiding stuff. Everywhere. Papers were destroyed. Chemical and biological weapons were taken out and buried. So there's one problem with "dangerous stuff we know about and we're worried that it's not being protected well", then there's an entirely different (and more dangerous) problem of "dangerous stuff we never acknowledged existed and nobody has records for where it is any more."
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    luckily almost all biological and chemical weapons are not stable, and quickly degrade without sophisticated storage. This is especially true of the most nasty stuff (nerve gas, viral agents, etc), which can break down within days of lacking precisely controlled refridgeration.

madaxe_again 11y ago

So, when the USSR disbanded, many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want. In theory, Russia took the warheads back and looked after them. In practice, there was an initial period of everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing from silos, and the response was to fill them with concrete to prevent any further access. What then happened is gangs came in the dead of night with diggers and drills and unearthed silos, and took who knows what. My source is a lengthy chat with a chap at Pervomaisk, a Soviet missile silo in Ukraine, who used to be the guy who'd press the button (there are two buttons and two keys, but he explained that you could use the soviet flagpole in there to press the other button). Now he gives tours to tourists. $1 for Ukrainians. $5 for Russians. $10 for ex-USSR members. $20 for foreigners. $100 for Americans - or something like that. I laughed heartily at their pricing structure, before straddling the Satan missile for the obligatory "riding the bomb" photo. This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR, and wasn't limited to fissile material - Degelen mountain in Kaz, for one, where they not only dug up left over Pu, but also thousands of tonnes of radioactive copper (cabling used for remote monitoring, power, and detonation of subsurface tests), which made its way into the global electronic supply chain, and was only discovered after they installed x-ray detectors at Dover for scanning for stowaways. My original source for that was a British truck driver who was paid to keep hush and not talk about why he'd ended up with (mild, flu-like, had to retire) radiation sickness - but it hit the press a few years later anyway.

jessriedel 11y ago
> many ex-soviet states (i.e. Ukraine) were stuck with a nuclear arsenal they couldn't maintain and didn't want. An important side point: Ukraine definitely wanted nuclear weapons, in particular as a viable threat against being re-annexed by Russia. Ukraine gave them up only after receiving a solemn promise by the US and UK that they would protect Ukraine's territorial integrity. "On December 5, 1994 the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Britain and the United States signed a memorandum to provide Ukraine with security assurances in connection with its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine

acqq 11y ago

In the article: "The FBI has privately discounted Moldovan claims that radioactive materials seized in more recent smuggling incidents here were being sought by the Islamic State terrorist group." Everything's safe, then? Let's investigate: According to the Moldovan police presentation: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2449125-moldova-law-enforcement-slide-presentation.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2449125-moldova-law-... The person interested in buying was of Arab-Islamic origin, Yosif Fiasal Ibrahim, 1975, citizen of Republic of Sudan, Africa. Also, Sky News: http://news.sky.com/story/1565320/the-colonel-dirty-bombs-and-240m-of-uranium http://news.sky.com/story/1565320/the-colonel-dirty-bombs-an... "Investigators found contracts made out to a Sudanese doctor named Yosif Faisal Ibrahim for attack helicopters and armoured personnel carriers. There was a copy of Ibrahim's passport, and evidence that Chetrus was trying to help him obtain a Moldovan visa. Skype messages suggested he was interested in uranium and the dirty bomb plans. The deal was interrupted by the sting, but it looked like it was well advanced. A lawyer working with the criminal ring had even travelled to Sudan, officials said." There are extremists in Sudan endorsing IS, Reuters, 2014: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-sudan-islamic-state-idUSKBN0FT2WP20140724#BFd6gzMwl5Xkkj6D.97 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-sudan-islamic-s... Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#Sharia_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan#Sharia_law "The legal system in Sudan is based on Islamic Sharia law." "Stoning remains a judicial punishment in Sudan. Between 2009 and 2012, several women were sentenced to death by stoning.[61][62][63]" FBI's and the article's claim could still be technically true (Ibrahim from Islamic Sudan, not ISIS) but it helps us being better informed.

ajmurmann 11y ago
Why is this being downvoted?
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  because Sharia law is a non sequitur?
  - acqq 11y ago
    Because it surely can't mean that the environment can be stimulating for the sympathisers, supporters or members of ISIS?

onewaystreet 11y ago

If this group has had enriched uranium for sale for the past sixteen years you would think that they would have sold it to North Korea or Iran a long time ago.

goodcanadian 11y ago
I don't think North Korea or Iran have much need of a single bomb's worth of enriched uranium. They have far more interest in producing their own.
- MrZongle2 11y ago
  It might be of use for a couple of reasons. One, you can compare the purchased material to that which you're trying to produce. Second, with the purchased material you can assemble and test-detonate a bomb, which not only causes other countries' intelligence agencies to question the value of their sources but gives you leverage in future negotiations.

rrggrr 11y ago

Unknown Russian black marketeer OR an unknown state's spy agency with a very effective honeypot for targeting and eliminating terrorist organizations? If the latter its a terrific self-funding operation taking some very bad people off the street. If you're going to worry about nuclear detonation then concern yourself with command and control of existing weaponized stockpiles. Stewarship is a challenge for developed nations, its got to be a nightmare for developing countries.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

elipsey 11y ago

It's kind of odd that uranium smugglers write each other sales reciepts and label the samples. It seems like something you'd want to downplay in your paperwork... "The guard found a receipt, written in Cyrillic, for the purchase of “uranium 235,” and then, after pulling apart an air compressor in the trunk, found a lead container inside with that label on it." Everything about this whole thing seems kind of implausible, and poorly substantiated by anonymous "intelligence sources." Kind of reminds me the Valorie Plame incident. Ahem.. I mean, we should all be very afriad, and obey the nearest authority figure!

terminado 11y ago
trying to find a buyer for 39 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium one kilogram of highly-enriched uranium for roughly $36 million $330,000 as an initial payment a small glass ampoule ... containing a blackish powder using genuine samples weighing a total of 5 grams as a lure dozens of such samples on its shelves meant to be the first of several shipments of highly-enriched uranium totaling 10 kilograms Doesn't sound like these are simple transactions. It's probably a bit of a horse trade to pawn off million dollar packages to people interested in murdering entire cities with nuclear fire. Also, I'd imagine a "receipt" in this case is not merely a set of carbon slips in salmon, canary and goldenrod. There are probably code words, used to mask meaning and ensure authenticity. But hey, you never know. Maybe it was just a coffee stained napkin with the following written on it in ballpoint pen: Dear Sergei, I.O.U. $360M - re: 10kg U235 4 bomb

AUmrysh 11y ago

If western intelligence knows about this and wants to get it off the black market, why don't they just buy it themselves? Surely the criminals selling it don't care where the money comes from.

iSnow 11y ago
Maybe it's just not true that there are 50+kg of weapons grade Uranium are out there, somewhere. Maybe it's all just a couple of grams that were specimens of production runs.
lojack 11y ago
> But no one in the West knows exactly who has this nuclear explosive material, and where they may be Probably because of this. I'm also quite certain that the criminals do care very much where the money comes from. Most criminals I know understand this is the difference between a pay day and a prison sentence.
- tlrobinson 11y ago
  Surely the US has a few spies with deep enough cover to pass as arms dealers? Or have I been watching too much TV?
dsmithatx 11y ago
Exactly. This makes no sense. If we think there is a enough to be concerned about, we don't want a terrorist to get it. Just by the stuff. 3 middle man have been arrested for delivering samples. How about just hire some Russian mobster to meet with the next middle man and get it off the street. Seems like they are too focused on catching the current owner of it which seems stupid to me.
x0x0 11y ago
I know. Make a standing offer: the US will give a 110% price match for these materials, no questions asked, or between the US and Russian security services we'll do our best to shoot you in the head. Choose.
11y ago

MengerSponge 11y ago

I'm amazed that no one in this thread has mentioned Project Sapphire yet. It's my favorite bit of 90's spycraft. Project Sapphire Wikipedia Entry: Project Sapphire was a successful 1994 covert operation of the United States government in cooperation with the Kazakhstan government to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. A warehouse at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant outside Ust-Kamenogorsk housed 1,322 pounds (600 kg) of weapons grade enriched uranium to fuel Alfa class submarines (90% U-235). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fuel was poorly documented and secured, and in danger of being sold for use in the construction of nuclear weapons. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002881.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09... http://www.y12.doe.gov/news/report/project-sapphire-today http://www.y12.doe.gov/news/report/project-sapphire-today

smacktoward 11y ago
Thank you! I remembered reading this story in the Post years ago, but couldn't remember the name of the operation so my Google-fu was insufficient to dig it up. Glad you shared it.

godgod 11y ago

If the US govt hadn't lied to us for the past few decades, I'd tend to give them the benefit of doubt here, but something tells me this is more US propaganda. I hate having to say that about my own govt but they have motives to make Russia look like the bad guy in every regard.

api 11y ago

I don't mean to engage in conspiranoia here (and I highly doubt there's an overt conspiratorial explanation), but right now I'm finding 'murmurs' like this especially alarming. When I look back at history, it seems like major economic turmoil is very often followed by outbreaks of major warfare or at the very least significant flirtations with major conflict. The Great Depression was followed by WWII, the decline toward the end of the 60s by the hottest period of Vietnam, the dot.com crash by 9/11 and Iraq, and the 2008 crash by the Ukraine crisis and what seems to have been a near miss between the USA, Russia, and possibly other powers. 2008 was also followed fairly shortly by the rise of ISIS and a re-heating of Iraq and its general region. We're hearing a lot about an impending emerging market debt crisis, and we know China has gone to 'heroic' efforts to backstop its stock market and real estate markets against the first stages of what appeared to be an unfolding crash. It's entirely possible that another economic crisis is brewing in China and other 'emerging' markets, and it could be a bad one. If that's the case at some point it will exceed the ability of even China's autocracy to prevent it with currency and market manipulations. As I led off with above, I doubt that there's an overt decision that happens. I doubt anyone says 'well, the economy's down so we better have a war!' Instead I suspect it's a bit like tectonic plates. When an economic crash happens it exacerbates stresses that are already present in the system and quite likely pushes some people and/or state actors over the edge. People often behave more desperately and irrationally under economic stress; you can see this in the willingness of former Soviet officials to actually distribute such deadly material during the waning days of the USSR. Not being able to eat is a powerful motivator. Edit: not deleting this, but I hate to have posted it hours before hearing about Paris.