6 ms·

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 t

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
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Remind me never to sign a memorandum with Britain or America...
  - ensignavenger 11y ago
    I was thinking the same thing... but then I don't know that the current Ukrainian government has requested military assistance, have they?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Ukraine itself didn't learn from what happened to Poland in 1939. We had treaties that said we're to be aided by France and the UK...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - bradleyjg 11y ago
      Which they did at enormous cost in lives and money. Ditto for Belgium in 1914. If you had said Czechoslovakia in 1938 that would have been a much better example.
      - ju-st 11y ago
        He propably refered to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War - the Allies did basically nothing until Germany invaded France
      - emp_zealoth 11y ago
        How can you call fighting to save their own damn asses only after they were attacked by Germany coming to Poland's aid?
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        At that stage the UK had no reason to declare war on Germany other than our promise to Poland. We could have sat back and just watched things play out. Indeed Hilter thought that we would do exactly that. (Bear in mind that there was not evidence of the holocaust for another 2 years. The huge (and real) moral basis of the European side of the second world war was largely discovered post facto.)
pdkl95 11y ago
> everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing > This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR This wasn't limited to military hardware. I visited Russia right after the dissolution (summer 92), and there as a mixture of celebration and uncertainty about what was going to fill the power vacuum. Organized crime was simply buying both land and power. With the exchange rate crashing 5 RUB:USD per day[1], literally everyone was panicking to get hard currency or anything that would otherwise hold value. I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency). [1] banks were giving ~95-100 RUB/USD when I arrived. A bit over two weeks later it was >180 RUB/USD.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency). It did. I was in Krosno visiting there right up against the Ukranian border (about 35 km) around that time and there was a 'black market' there that sold just about anything that could be carted across the border or that could move by itself. Regular army gear (including weapons and munition) were openly for sale, vehicles as many as you wanted and 'larger stuff' (unspecified but it was pretty clear what they meant) to order. Apparently you could even buy warplanes if you had the means to pick them up, and one dutch scrap metal trader did just that (and promptly got caught with 2 more-or-less combat ready Mig 21's at the Dutch border in a large truck...).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
HillaryBriss 11y ago
Wait. Radioactive copper in the global electronics supply chain? What strategies can an average joe use to minimize exposure to that?
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Geiger Counter / Radiation Sensor: http://www.adafruit.com/categories/73 http://www.adafruit.com/categories/73
- api 11y ago
  The quantity in an individual device is likely to be so tiny (milligrams) that it's not a risk. It's also likely to have been melted down and put through the global recycling chain which would have substantially diluted it. But it was a risk to people handling the original material in bulk. An unknown number of workers in the global copper supply and recycling chain were likely exposed to above-limit doses. A lot of materials safety concerns are more for protection of workers than end users. Lead removal from electronics is an example. There's not really any risk to owning electronics with lead in them unless you are incinerating them or enjoy licking circuit boards, but it is a serious occupational risk to factory workers and also a disposal problem.
- Animats 11y ago
  Radioactive copper can't stay radioactive long. The longest-lived isotope is 64Cu, with a half life of 12 hours. Mildly radioactive junk is not that rare. Stanford used to have a little fenced area near the toxic waste incinerator with stainless steel parts left over from accelerator experiments cooling off. 55Fe has a 2.7 year half life, so you let it cool off for a decade or so, then recycle. The only protection was an chain-link fence, a radiation warning trefoil, and a street light. One day somebody cut the fence and stole the stainless steel, prompting a search of scrapyards. But the metal was near the end of its storage period anyway, and wasn't detectable as radioactive.
smacktoward 11y ago
> 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. Yeah, and it wasn't just in the silos, either. The notorious arms smuggler Viktor Bout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout), for instance, built the private air force he used to deliver his goods around the world by grabbing Soviet Air Force transport planes wherever he could. The story goes that his people even pried one off a pedestal that had been placed in front of an air force base as a display piece.
- trhway 11y ago
  back at the time even military ships in active service (not in conservation) lost a lot of electronic hardware - the Soviet electronics was "rich" in various valuable metals - and of course various cabling and wires connecting that electronics. Some of those few new Navy ships what were being built at the time had the same electronic hardware delivered several times as it was stolen right after installation (or even before, while stored at or near the ship waiting to be installed) Actually, it is un-explainable miracle to me - a Russian who has lived there and saw what was happening at the end of 198x and through the 199x - that the world's black markets weren't flooded with USSR nukes and related materials. USSR had 40000 nuclear warheards. Sure there should had been a couple lost :)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Maybe it's harder to rationalize letting a nuke get into the wrong hands. Stuff like this is usually rationalized with something like, "Why should I do the right thing? It doesn't help me any, and nobody gets hurt, or at least the people who get hurt are far away." But even an idiot might pause and think about the possibility that their life might be negatively affected if they end up starting a global thermonuclear war.
  - bsder 11y ago
    > USSR had 40000 nuclear warheards. Sure there should had been a couple lost Unable to find a fence. Even I could fence gold and silver or copper. Rare earths would have me scratching my head a bit, but I could probably figure it out. Uranium or plutonium? How would I even start? I'd have to try to sell to North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan or who else? How would I even come into contact with the appropriate people?

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

IshKebab 11y ago
Remind me never to sign a memorandum with Britain or America...
- ensignavenger 11y ago
  I was thinking the same thing... but then I don't know that the current Ukrainian government has requested military assistance, have they?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Ukraine itself didn't learn from what happened to Poland in 1939. We had treaties that said we're to be aided by France and the UK...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    Which they did at enormous cost in lives and money. Ditto for Belgium in 1914. If you had said Czechoslovakia in 1938 that would have been a much better example.
    - ju-st 11y ago
      He propably refered to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War - the Allies did basically nothing until Germany invaded France
    - emp_zealoth 11y ago
      How can you call fighting to save their own damn asses only after they were attacked by Germany coming to Poland's aid?
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        At that stage the UK had no reason to declare war on Germany other than our promise to Poland. We could have sat back and just watched things play out. Indeed Hilter thought that we would do exactly that. (Bear in mind that there was not evidence of the holocaust for another 2 years. The huge (and real) moral basis of the European side of the second world war was largely discovered post facto.)

pdkl95 11y ago

> everything that wasn't bolted down disappearing > This same phenomenon was mirrored elsewhere in the ex-USSR This wasn't limited to military hardware. I visited Russia right after the dissolution (summer 92), and there as a mixture of celebration and uncertainty about what was going to fill the power vacuum. Organized crime was simply buying both land and power. With the exchange rate crashing 5 RUB:USD per day[1], literally everyone was panicking to get hard currency or anything that would otherwise hold value. I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency). [1] banks were giving ~95-100 RUB/USD when I arrived. A bit over two weeks later it was >180 RUB/USD.

jacquesm 11y ago
> I wouldn't surprise me if this attitude extended to military hardware if the price was right (and in the right currency). It did. I was in Krosno visiting there right up against the Ukranian border (about 35 km) around that time and there was a 'black market' there that sold just about anything that could be carted across the border or that could move by itself. Regular army gear (including weapons and munition) were openly for sale, vehicles as many as you wanted and 'larger stuff' (unspecified but it was pretty clear what they meant) to order. Apparently you could even buy warplanes if you had the means to pick them up, and one dutch scrap metal trader did just that (and promptly got caught with 2 more-or-less combat ready Mig 21's at the Dutch border in a large truck...).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

HillaryBriss 11y ago

Wait. Radioactive copper in the global electronics supply chain? What strategies can an average joe use to minimize exposure to that?

nosuchthing 11y ago
Geiger Counter / Radiation Sensor: http://www.adafruit.com/categories/73 http://www.adafruit.com/categories/73
api 11y ago
The quantity in an individual device is likely to be so tiny (milligrams) that it's not a risk. It's also likely to have been melted down and put through the global recycling chain which would have substantially diluted it. But it was a risk to people handling the original material in bulk. An unknown number of workers in the global copper supply and recycling chain were likely exposed to above-limit doses. A lot of materials safety concerns are more for protection of workers than end users. Lead removal from electronics is an example. There's not really any risk to owning electronics with lead in them unless you are incinerating them or enjoy licking circuit boards, but it is a serious occupational risk to factory workers and also a disposal problem.
Animats 11y ago
Radioactive copper can't stay radioactive long. The longest-lived isotope is 64Cu, with a half life of 12 hours. Mildly radioactive junk is not that rare. Stanford used to have a little fenced area near the toxic waste incinerator with stainless steel parts left over from accelerator experiments cooling off. 55Fe has a 2.7 year half life, so you let it cool off for a decade or so, then recycle. The only protection was an chain-link fence, a radiation warning trefoil, and a street light. One day somebody cut the fence and stole the stainless steel, prompting a search of scrapyards. But the metal was near the end of its storage period anyway, and wasn't detectable as radioactive.

smacktoward 11y ago

> 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. Yeah, and it wasn't just in the silos, either. The notorious arms smuggler Viktor Bout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout), for instance, built the private air force he used to deliver his goods around the world by grabbing Soviet Air Force transport planes wherever he could. The story goes that his people even pried one off a pedestal that had been placed in front of an air force base as a display piece.

trhway 11y ago
back at the time even military ships in active service (not in conservation) lost a lot of electronic hardware - the Soviet electronics was "rich" in various valuable metals - and of course various cabling and wires connecting that electronics. Some of those few new Navy ships what were being built at the time had the same electronic hardware delivered several times as it was stolen right after installation (or even before, while stored at or near the ship waiting to be installed) Actually, it is un-explainable miracle to me - a Russian who has lived there and saw what was happening at the end of 198x and through the 199x - that the world's black markets weren't flooded with USSR nukes and related materials. USSR had 40000 nuclear warheards. Sure there should had been a couple lost :)
- mikeash 11y ago
  Maybe it's harder to rationalize letting a nuke get into the wrong hands. Stuff like this is usually rationalized with something like, "Why should I do the right thing? It doesn't help me any, and nobody gets hurt, or at least the people who get hurt are far away." But even an idiot might pause and think about the possibility that their life might be negatively affected if they end up starting a global thermonuclear war.
- bsder 11y ago
  > USSR had 40000 nuclear warheards. Sure there should had been a couple lost Unable to find a fence. Even I could fence gold and silver or copper. Rare earths would have me scratching my head a bit, but I could probably figure it out. Uranium or plutonium? How would I even start? I'd have to try to sell to North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan or who else? How would I even come into contact with the appropriate people?