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How to Keep 600 Kilograms of Kazakh Highly Enriched Uranium Safe

149 points by sbmthakur 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago
This is all astonishing. It doesn't say what was done with the nuke warheads. Maybe they too were flown to the US, even before the U-235? At the end it mentions "tons of plutonium", presumably subsequently exported, and biological warfare materiel. We know the Soviets had literally tons of smallpox dust packaged so they could easily infect a whole city. We must wonder what happened in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Russia took back the nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan around the same time.
- krasin 5y ago
  According to ([1]), the nuke warheads were safely transferred to Russia: "Kazakhstan formerly had 1,410 Soviet strategic nuclear warheads placed on its territory and an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons. ... Kazakhstan transferred all of its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation by April 1995." 1. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/kazakhstan-nuclear-disarmament/ https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/kazakhstan-nuclear-dis...
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I'm sure, like Ukraine, they are now regretting that decision.
    - krasin 5y ago
      Probably. On the other hand, Ukraine had the pool of engineers and scientists to maintain / develop it, while Kazakhstan might have not: it's a smaller, mostly rural country. For example, in 1991, Ukraine had 15 nuclear reactors (~27% of the total electrical generational capacity) across 4 plants, while Kazakzhstan had a single reactor closed in 1999 ([2]). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Kazakhstan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Kazakhstan
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      After seeing what happened to Libya when they gave up their nuclear ambitions, and what happened to Ukraine when they gave up their nuclear ambitions, how can anything think that the Iranians would give up their nuclear ambitions? I live in the state most threatened by a nuclear Iran. But Iran has watched its neighbour to the west be invaded by NATO forces, Iran has watched its neighbour to the east be invaded by NATO forces, and has seen how NATO cowers in front of Russia at the hint of nuclear confrontation. If I were in their shoes, I would not give up the nation's only proven viable deterrent.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        the crazy part is, just like the proverbial "iraq WMDs" the whole "iran threat" is mostly propaganda. sure they are "enriching uranium" but you have thousands of ALREADY READY nuclear weapons so why would they try to use their currently non-existing weapons against someone who does? i have read on HN that "many countries opposed the US when it invaded iraq, afghanistan, yada yada" but the fact is, they way russia is being sidelined and singled out, no one has had the balls to do that with USA even when they managed to destroy sovereign nations in the interests of "free democracy" and other shenanigans.
        dotancohen 5y ago
        > the crazy part is, just like the proverbial "iraq WMDs" the whole "iran threat" is mostly propaganda. Here we disagree. Iran is a real threat, they are major backering force behind both Hamas and Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic (distinct from the Persian people) is ideologically driven and regularly chants Death to America and Death to Israel. I could definitely see the friction with Iran going hot.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        go on and disagree. "regularly chants Death to America" does this really affect you to a point that you and your government are scared of threats and want to preemptively want to remove the threat? " Death to Israel." why do you care about israel as an american? are you a citizen of that country also that you feel a sense of insecurity towards that? " Iran is a real threat, they are major backering force behind both Hamas and Hezbollah". cool so america can destroy IRAQ, afghanistan, libya, syria, vietnam among others but irans threat are a concern for you. good.
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      Nobody in the world wants a nuclear-armed Kazakhstan. On the other hand, Kazakhstan is much more stable politically, not permanently bankrupt or begging, and actually has good relations with both Russia and the West - all of that compared to Ukraine. Not sure they really want a nuclear survivor adventure instead.
      - actionfromafar 5y ago
        Kazakhstan is stable politically in much the same way as North Korea is stable politically. (Just in case someone thought of democracy when they read "stable".)
        thriftwy 5y ago
        Democracy is shrinking around the world, so as much as we like the concept theoretically, we should probably remove it from the definition of "stable". China seems quite stable too. And Kazakhstan is not quite locked down like North Korea. You were thinking Turkmenistan, or just projecting your prejudice towards all Central Asia. It is not without problems, of course.
      - BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
        Ukraine had stable relations with Russia until they decided they wanted to align with the west and adopt democracy when there was a color revolution in 2014. If they had remained a vassal state of Russia, their relationship would still be stable. Similarly, the situation in Kazakhstan is stable because they are a vassal state of Russia. Watch what happened when there was the beginning of a color revolution there earlier this year: Russian quickly sent troops to assist the Kazakh government in violently putting it down. If a successful color revolution was to happen in Kazakhstan (unlikely), Russia would be playing the same military games with them that they are now doing with Ukraine.
        thriftwy 5y ago
        But Kazakhstan is already very well aligned with the West. In many areas its policies are more westernized than these of Ukraine. It also has the economy to apply these policies to. It's just realistic about needing to be reasonably polite with Russia, its largest neighbour and biggest trade partner, while minding its own business. Is there an example of a "successful" color revolution which brougt democracy and prosperity, instead of bringing Russian tanks and more coups de etat? You are exactly right - if one of these happens in Kazakhstan, RIP Kazakhstan. It's too complex of a country already.
    - SiempreViernes 5y ago
      The reality was that these were Russian warheads on Kazakh and Ukrainian soil, so it wasn't so much "giving up nukes" as "getting rid of foreign nuclear armed forces". The units actually holding the genocide weapons were loyal to Moscow, so becoming the de-facto owners would have involved fighting with Russian nuclear armed military units. YOLO indeed.
      - drran 5y ago
        They were Soviet warheads. Soviet Union (officialy) was created by RF, Ukraine, and Belarus. Also, Ukraine and Belarus are members of UN.
      - baybal2 5y ago
  - actionfromafar 5y ago
    Damn, that's four years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Pretty late. I remember what I was doing in 1995. Nukes getting transferred to the Russian Federation would definitely have surprised me, had I known.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      I think the Russians had agreed to destroy them all.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
"Drive and fly well, pray you don't crash" seems to be the how you keep it safe. Wasn't there a ban on making new nukes at the time? What did the US do with the uranium?
- Maakuth 5y ago
  Enriching (to much lower concentration of U-235) is also a part of nuclear fuel cycle, so a peaceful way of getting rid of this material would be to dilute it and make fuel.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  There was a ban, but the US got around it by claiming they were upgrading existing one's or something like that. The key point being the agreement didnt mention anything about "upgrades" which is akin to building new nukes. Not the first time the US has done this when considering how Nato only provided a verbal agreement they wouldnt expand towards Russia and here we are now. Oh and lets not forget Crimea region (assuming sea area) is reportedly supposed to have the 4 largest oil deposits which always comes in handy when the Saudi's are running out hence the massive diversification drive seen in the middle east. I did notice someone felt uneasy about anthrax spores contaminating soil so decided to have a bit of a bonfire on Anthrax Island in the UK! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-60892350 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-608... It wouldnt have taken much to find some spores, wild bird nesting sites will turn soil over and could still offer up some spores post bonfire, but it doesnt take much to bring on your own dormant biological weapon anthrax spores in todays world with easy access to knowledge across borders. Cows & Sheep are natural carriers, sheep more so due to their high copper content which is needed to make wool, which is why they used sheep in the original Anthrax Island experiment, but its basic biology growing your own bacteria now a days! Militaries around the world when they did these sorts of experiments decades ago, never thought communication would improve to todays standards ie the internet which means alot of things they thought they could keep secret is no longer the case! One of their tactics with sensitive stuff is to use older people because they die off more quickly and the secrets die with them, plus old people dont get to spend time with the younger generation that could be an easy way to pass on secrets. Moral of the story, talk to the older generation which might have worked in the military doing secret stuff to find out what they know. However even your grandparents who might have been in that situation, wont tell you everything they did, because it might protect you, so talk to random older people to find out stuff, less obvious connection then.
jpgvm 5y ago
600kg of 90% enriched U235 is pretty nuts. Crazy to think just how much weapons grade material the Soviet Union and US produced during the Cold War, obviously so much that 600kg wasn't worth the effort for Russia to care about atleast.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Insane. 600 kg of Uranium fits in 1.11 cubic-ft or 0.03 cubic-m. I suppose it is compartmentalized in Type-A rad-shielded containers [1] which takes up most of the weight and space. [1] https://www.frontier-cf252.com/radioactive-containers/ https://www.frontier-cf252.com/radioactive-containers/
  - gadders 5y ago
    Critical mass is 47kg, so I think you would have to distribute it across a few containers I think.
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
    Please don't try to store 600kg of U238 in a 1.11 cubic-ft container. That's just asking for it to go pop. Fissile material like that needs to be spread out, to prevent any one lump becoming supercritical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_criticality_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_criticality_safety
    - mcv 5y ago
      I would think it'd do a bit more than pop. They didn't spread it out over a bunch of trucks and three planes for nothing. Most of the weight is going to be secure containers, not the uranium itself.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      No one is suggesting to put it in a small box and throwing it in the back of the airplane. It was to ascertain the readers with a mental picture of how much snuff we're dealing with here. Furthermore, it probably won't go pop, most likely fissile out into a dusty neutronic poof, not worth reporting to higher ups for obvious reasons. For a respectable, mushroom-cloud-worthy yield, you need to jam it in a rather serious reinforcement of Tungsten outer shell to make a weak gun-type bomb. It would still be unimpressive (thermo guys are gonna laugh at you), but hell of a lot better than stuffing it unintentionally in a small box. Safety is only important if there are further plans for survival, so it is sort of a moot point in this radioactive extravaganza. If you do happen to lose the material, be sure to have access to Tungsten as it is almost the same density (a tad bit higher than U238) and no one is going to notice it until we need to use it in the next war.
lizardactivist 5y ago
This was around the same time of the sinking of MS Estonia -- hold your downvotes -- which has been shown, through inspection of the cargo and shipping logs with the Estonian authorities, to have been transporting Soviet military vehicles carrying military materials. I'm wondering if the efforts here to remove nuclear material are somehow related, and if the story in this article is 100% true to the facts. At least I find it strange that Russia would happily see the material handed off like that, and I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia.
- tapland 5y ago
  Estonia is still a hot topic and new dives to the wreck always bring new calls for more thorough investigations. It's worth the time to look into if you like speculation around the fall of the Soviet union and political cover ups.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  In 1994 Russia was a complete mess and it did not even have a functioning secret service (KGB vanished into thin air and FSB was not created yet). Even if it wanted to interfere it couldn't. It spent time surrendering to separatists in Khasavurt. The more interesting question than the 600 kilograms of Uranium is why Russia did not have a KGB-descendant and where all of the materials collected by the central Soviet KGB went.
  - varjag 5y ago
    No, KGB was not disrupted at any point. FSB's predecessor name after KGB was FSK. All three run by same people sitting in the same offices.
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      FSK was created in late December, 1993. As it name implies, it started with counter-intelligence. And the fun thing is, it was not created by "the same people who ran Soviet KGB", but by the Ukrainian intelligence officer who previously converted KGB of Ukrainian SSR to SNBU (Ukraine's secret service). The conversion of Ukraine KGB to SNBU and later to SBU was straightforward and happened on the spot, but the creation of FSK/FSB was happening much later, in multiple stages and they did seem to inherit only minor pieces of KGB. Source: https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 - I did not verify these claims but they do seem interesting.
cm2187 5y ago
Amusing related fact of the day, I heard the french nuclear authority transports some of the radioactive uranium in retail pressure cookers. Apparently it's good enough the stop those radiations, they need the pressure release valve, and is much cheaper than to build something custom with very little benefits.
- blurrypepe 5y ago
  Wow that's interesting! Do you happen to have a source for that? I'd like to read more about this...
  - cm2187 5y ago
    No, something someone working there told me [edit] actually https://www.rt.com/news/pressure-cooker-plutonium-france-628/ https://www.rt.com/news/pressure-cooker-plutonium-france-628...
    - karambahh 5y ago
      A more reputable source in french: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/cherche-cocottes-minute-pour-materiau-nucleaire_390621.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/cherche-cocottes-minute-p... A witness in this article adds that "every nuclear facility in the world use them"
- adrianN 5y ago
  Which brand of pressure cooker though? I'm in the market for a new one. If it's good enough for uranium it's probably good enough for my beans.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I definitely won't buy a used one after reading this :')
  - nbernard 5y ago
    IIRC, Seb: https://www.seb.fr/ https://www.seb.fr/
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Finding a place to sure nuclear waste from civlian reactors has been a difficult job in the US. I think the Nevada site eventually got rejected. Last I checked power plants still store waste on site. When it comes to far more dangeorus uranium waste talked about in this article where does the military store it? I presume they have their own site that is operational and not waiting for the national one?
- jpgvm 5y ago
  This is not waste. This is weapons grade fissile material. It was taken to Oak Ridge for storage and very likely used to maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile. Most nuclear waste really isn't that scary and even when it's scary it's not scary for very long. i.e the half life of the really nasty stuff is pretty short. Also storing it under water or in concrete is generally good enough. We only really worry about leakage into groundwater etc when thinking about very long term storage. Basically risks/worries about nuclear waste are massively overblown, humans have a hard time comprehending large numbers in relation to other large numbers. They see long half life and that is it, few stop to consider concentration etc. TLDR: stuff in article not waste. Stored securely at national labs and weapons facilities or shoved into bombs.
f7ebc20c97 5y ago
I wonder what it sold for, besides the trinkets mentioned at the end. If they had hodled they could clear maybe a trillion on the open market today (which consists of sovereign states). Highly enriched U-235 would also be a sound basis for a commodity-backed hard currency, though not quite as good as the US Dollar and the Ruble which are backed by Pu-239.
- ovi256 5y ago
  > what it sold for Nuclear bomb construction material has no open market, it's only held by nuclear powers who work hard to prevent anyone else from possessing it (see the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) - that's the big stick, resulting in North Korea tier sanctions. The trinkets were the carrot. Kazakhstan made a nuanced calculation of the risk of holding the enriched Uranium, concluded it wasn't worth it.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
> Trucks carrying almost 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium had just left a nuclear facility I see a small problem with this statement, and with the picture at the beginning of the article. Uranium is dense: 19.1 g/cm3. Enriched Uranium has a similar density, within a +/- 2% from "normal" Uranium. It means that a cube of 600kg of enriched Uranium would be approx. 31cm x 31cm x 31cm. You don't need "trucks" for that.
- thealistra 5y ago
  have you taken into account the box to keep it safe to handle?
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    ... and the shielding to keep you safe from it and the fact that you need to package it into smaller chunks to prevent criticality, etc.
    - grosswait 5y ago
      …and back to the mere weight and density. Yeah, it’ll fit in the back of your hatchback, but after dragging the rear for a few minutes, one good bump might punch it right through the floor.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  Hmm. I wonder if there’s any downside to storing too much enriched uranium in a single solid cube.
  - choeger 5y ago
    I cannot think of anything supercritical...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
starwind 5y ago
If anyone wants a detailed history of nuclear and biological weapons during the Cold War and the early post-Cold War days, I highly recommend The Dead Hand by David Hoffman
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
... use it as fuel? If we had a modular MSR reactor we could cart it there and "burn" it. Otherwise can't you just de-enrich it by mixing in other Uranium isotopes and send it the usual way to the nuclear solid fuel rod monopoly? Is what they actually mean is "it's REALLY valuable since it's already enriched weapons-grade, so how do we keep it until someone "safe" pays for it."?

149 points by sbmthakur 5y ago

This is all astonishing. It doesn't say what was done with the nuke warheads. Maybe they too were flown to the US, even before the U-235? At the end it mentions "tons of plutonium", presumably subsequently exported, and biological warfare materiel. We know the Soviets had literally tons of smallpox dust packaged so they could easily infect a whole city. We must wonder what happened in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Russia took back the nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan around the same time.
krasin 5y ago
According to ([1]), the nuke warheads were safely transferred to Russia: "Kazakhstan formerly had 1,410 Soviet strategic nuclear warheads placed on its territory and an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons. ... Kazakhstan transferred all of its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation by April 1995." 1. https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/kazakhstan-nuclear-disarmament/ https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/kazakhstan-nuclear-dis...
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I'm sure, like Ukraine, they are now regretting that decision.
  - krasin 5y ago
    Probably. On the other hand, Ukraine had the pool of engineers and scientists to maintain / develop it, while Kazakhstan might have not: it's a smaller, mostly rural country. For example, in 1991, Ukraine had 15 nuclear reactors (~27% of the total electrical generational capacity) across 4 plants, while Kazakzhstan had a single reactor closed in 1999 ([2]). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Kazakhstan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Kazakhstan
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    After seeing what happened to Libya when they gave up their nuclear ambitions, and what happened to Ukraine when they gave up their nuclear ambitions, how can anything think that the Iranians would give up their nuclear ambitions? I live in the state most threatened by a nuclear Iran. But Iran has watched its neighbour to the west be invaded by NATO forces, Iran has watched its neighbour to the east be invaded by NATO forces, and has seen how NATO cowers in front of Russia at the hint of nuclear confrontation. If I were in their shoes, I would not give up the nation's only proven viable deterrent.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      the crazy part is, just like the proverbial "iraq WMDs" the whole "iran threat" is mostly propaganda. sure they are "enriching uranium" but you have thousands of ALREADY READY nuclear weapons so why would they try to use their currently non-existing weapons against someone who does? i have read on HN that "many countries opposed the US when it invaded iraq, afghanistan, yada yada" but the fact is, they way russia is being sidelined and singled out, no one has had the balls to do that with USA even when they managed to destroy sovereign nations in the interests of "free democracy" and other shenanigans.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        > the crazy part is, just like the proverbial "iraq WMDs" the whole "iran threat" is mostly propaganda. Here we disagree. Iran is a real threat, they are major backering force behind both Hamas and Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic (distinct from the Persian people) is ideologically driven and regularly chants Death to America and Death to Israel. I could definitely see the friction with Iran going hot.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        go on and disagree. "regularly chants Death to America" does this really affect you to a point that you and your government are scared of threats and want to preemptively want to remove the threat? " Death to Israel." why do you care about israel as an american? are you a citizen of that country also that you feel a sense of insecurity towards that? " Iran is a real threat, they are major backering force behind both Hamas and Hezbollah". cool so america can destroy IRAQ, afghanistan, libya, syria, vietnam among others but irans threat are a concern for you. good.
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    Nobody in the world wants a nuclear-armed Kazakhstan. On the other hand, Kazakhstan is much more stable politically, not permanently bankrupt or begging, and actually has good relations with both Russia and the West - all of that compared to Ukraine. Not sure they really want a nuclear survivor adventure instead.
    - actionfromafar 5y ago
      Kazakhstan is stable politically in much the same way as North Korea is stable politically. (Just in case someone thought of democracy when they read "stable".)
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        Democracy is shrinking around the world, so as much as we like the concept theoretically, we should probably remove it from the definition of "stable". China seems quite stable too. And Kazakhstan is not quite locked down like North Korea. You were thinking Turkmenistan, or just projecting your prejudice towards all Central Asia. It is not without problems, of course.
    - BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
      Ukraine had stable relations with Russia until they decided they wanted to align with the west and adopt democracy when there was a color revolution in 2014. If they had remained a vassal state of Russia, their relationship would still be stable. Similarly, the situation in Kazakhstan is stable because they are a vassal state of Russia. Watch what happened when there was the beginning of a color revolution there earlier this year: Russian quickly sent troops to assist the Kazakh government in violently putting it down. If a successful color revolution was to happen in Kazakhstan (unlikely), Russia would be playing the same military games with them that they are now doing with Ukraine.
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        But Kazakhstan is already very well aligned with the West. In many areas its policies are more westernized than these of Ukraine. It also has the economy to apply these policies to. It's just realistic about needing to be reasonably polite with Russia, its largest neighbour and biggest trade partner, while minding its own business. Is there an example of a "successful" color revolution which brougt democracy and prosperity, instead of bringing Russian tanks and more coups de etat? You are exactly right - if one of these happens in Kazakhstan, RIP Kazakhstan. It's too complex of a country already.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    The reality was that these were Russian warheads on Kazakh and Ukrainian soil, so it wasn't so much "giving up nukes" as "getting rid of foreign nuclear armed forces". The units actually holding the genocide weapons were loyal to Moscow, so becoming the de-facto owners would have involved fighting with Russian nuclear armed military units. YOLO indeed.
    - drran 5y ago
      They were Soviet warheads. Soviet Union (officialy) was created by RF, Ukraine, and Belarus. Also, Ukraine and Belarus are members of UN.
    - baybal2 5y ago
- actionfromafar 5y ago
  Damn, that's four years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Pretty late. I remember what I was doing in 1995. Nukes getting transferred to the Russian Federation would definitely have surprised me, had I known.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    I think the Russians had agreed to destroy them all.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

"Drive and fly well, pray you don't crash" seems to be the how you keep it safe. Wasn't there a ban on making new nukes at the time? What did the US do with the uranium?

Maakuth 5y ago
Enriching (to much lower concentration of U-235) is also a part of nuclear fuel cycle, so a peaceful way of getting rid of this material would be to dilute it and make fuel.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
There was a ban, but the US got around it by claiming they were upgrading existing one's or something like that. The key point being the agreement didnt mention anything about "upgrades" which is akin to building new nukes. Not the first time the US has done this when considering how Nato only provided a verbal agreement they wouldnt expand towards Russia and here we are now. Oh and lets not forget Crimea region (assuming sea area) is reportedly supposed to have the 4 largest oil deposits which always comes in handy when the Saudi's are running out hence the massive diversification drive seen in the middle east. I did notice someone felt uneasy about anthrax spores contaminating soil so decided to have a bit of a bonfire on Anthrax Island in the UK! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-60892350 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-608... It wouldnt have taken much to find some spores, wild bird nesting sites will turn soil over and could still offer up some spores post bonfire, but it doesnt take much to bring on your own dormant biological weapon anthrax spores in todays world with easy access to knowledge across borders. Cows & Sheep are natural carriers, sheep more so due to their high copper content which is needed to make wool, which is why they used sheep in the original Anthrax Island experiment, but its basic biology growing your own bacteria now a days! Militaries around the world when they did these sorts of experiments decades ago, never thought communication would improve to todays standards ie the internet which means alot of things they thought they could keep secret is no longer the case! One of their tactics with sensitive stuff is to use older people because they die off more quickly and the secrets die with them, plus old people dont get to spend time with the younger generation that could be an easy way to pass on secrets. Moral of the story, talk to the older generation which might have worked in the military doing secret stuff to find out what they know. However even your grandparents who might have been in that situation, wont tell you everything they did, because it might protect you, so talk to random older people to find out stuff, less obvious connection then.

jpgvm 5y ago

600kg of 90% enriched U235 is pretty nuts. Crazy to think just how much weapons grade material the Soviet Union and US produced during the Cold War, obviously so much that 600kg wasn't worth the effort for Russia to care about atleast.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
Insane. 600 kg of Uranium fits in 1.11 cubic-ft or 0.03 cubic-m. I suppose it is compartmentalized in Type-A rad-shielded containers [1] which takes up most of the weight and space. [1] https://www.frontier-cf252.com/radioactive-containers/ https://www.frontier-cf252.com/radioactive-containers/
- gadders 5y ago
  Critical mass is 47kg, so I think you would have to distribute it across a few containers I think.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  Please don't try to store 600kg of U238 in a 1.11 cubic-ft container. That's just asking for it to go pop. Fissile material like that needs to be spread out, to prevent any one lump becoming supercritical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_criticality_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_criticality_safety
  - mcv 5y ago
    I would think it'd do a bit more than pop. They didn't spread it out over a bunch of trucks and three planes for nothing. Most of the weight is going to be secure containers, not the uranium itself.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    No one is suggesting to put it in a small box and throwing it in the back of the airplane. It was to ascertain the readers with a mental picture of how much snuff we're dealing with here. Furthermore, it probably won't go pop, most likely fissile out into a dusty neutronic poof, not worth reporting to higher ups for obvious reasons. For a respectable, mushroom-cloud-worthy yield, you need to jam it in a rather serious reinforcement of Tungsten outer shell to make a weak gun-type bomb. It would still be unimpressive (thermo guys are gonna laugh at you), but hell of a lot better than stuffing it unintentionally in a small box. Safety is only important if there are further plans for survival, so it is sort of a moot point in this radioactive extravaganza. If you do happen to lose the material, be sure to have access to Tungsten as it is almost the same density (a tad bit higher than U238) and no one is going to notice it until we need to use it in the next war.

lizardactivist 5y ago

This was around the same time of the sinking of MS Estonia -- hold your downvotes -- which has been shown, through inspection of the cargo and shipping logs with the Estonian authorities, to have been transporting Soviet military vehicles carrying military materials. I'm wondering if the efforts here to remove nuclear material are somehow related, and if the story in this article is 100% true to the facts. At least I find it strange that Russia would happily see the material handed off like that, and I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia.

tapland 5y ago
Estonia is still a hot topic and new dives to the wreck always bring new calls for more thorough investigations. It's worth the time to look into if you like speculation around the fall of the Soviet union and political cover ups.
thriftwy 5y ago
In 1994 Russia was a complete mess and it did not even have a functioning secret service (KGB vanished into thin air and FSB was not created yet). Even if it wanted to interfere it couldn't. It spent time surrendering to separatists in Khasavurt. The more interesting question than the 600 kilograms of Uranium is why Russia did not have a KGB-descendant and where all of the materials collected by the central Soviet KGB went.
- varjag 5y ago
  No, KGB was not disrupted at any point. FSB's predecessor name after KGB was FSK. All three run by same people sitting in the same offices.
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    FSK was created in late December, 1993. As it name implies, it started with counter-intelligence. And the fun thing is, it was not created by "the same people who ran Soviet KGB", but by the Ukrainian intelligence officer who previously converted KGB of Ukrainian SSR to SNBU (Ukraine's secret service). The conversion of Ukraine KGB to SNBU and later to SBU was straightforward and happened on the spot, but the creation of FSK/FSB was happening much later, in multiple stages and they did seem to inherit only minor pieces of KGB. Source: https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 - I did not verify these claims but they do seem interesting.

cm2187 5y ago

Amusing related fact of the day, I heard the french nuclear authority transports some of the radioactive uranium in retail pressure cookers. Apparently it's good enough the stop those radiations, they need the pressure release valve, and is much cheaper than to build something custom with very little benefits.

blurrypepe 5y ago
Wow that's interesting! Do you happen to have a source for that? I'd like to read more about this...
- cm2187 5y ago
  No, something someone working there told me [edit] actually https://www.rt.com/news/pressure-cooker-plutonium-france-628/ https://www.rt.com/news/pressure-cooker-plutonium-france-628...
  - karambahh 5y ago
    A more reputable source in french: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/cherche-cocottes-minute-pour-materiau-nucleaire_390621.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/cherche-cocottes-minute-p... A witness in this article adds that "every nuclear facility in the world use them"
adrianN 5y ago
Which brand of pressure cooker though? I'm in the market for a new one. If it's good enough for uranium it's probably good enough for my beans.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I definitely won't buy a used one after reading this :')
- nbernard 5y ago
  IIRC, Seb: https://www.seb.fr/ https://www.seb.fr/

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Finding a place to sure nuclear waste from civlian reactors has been a difficult job in the US. I think the Nevada site eventually got rejected. Last I checked power plants still store waste on site. When it comes to far more dangeorus uranium waste talked about in this article where does the military store it? I presume they have their own site that is operational and not waiting for the national one?

jpgvm 5y ago
This is not waste. This is weapons grade fissile material. It was taken to Oak Ridge for storage and very likely used to maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile. Most nuclear waste really isn't that scary and even when it's scary it's not scary for very long. i.e the half life of the really nasty stuff is pretty short. Also storing it under water or in concrete is generally good enough. We only really worry about leakage into groundwater etc when thinking about very long term storage. Basically risks/worries about nuclear waste are massively overblown, humans have a hard time comprehending large numbers in relation to other large numbers. They see long half life and that is it, few stop to consider concentration etc. TLDR: stuff in article not waste. Stored securely at national labs and weapons facilities or shoved into bombs.

f7ebc20c97 5y ago

I wonder what it sold for, besides the trinkets mentioned at the end. If they had hodled they could clear maybe a trillion on the open market today (which consists of sovereign states). Highly enriched U-235 would also be a sound basis for a commodity-backed hard currency, though not quite as good as the US Dollar and the Ruble which are backed by Pu-239.

ovi256 5y ago
> what it sold for Nuclear bomb construction material has no open market, it's only held by nuclear powers who work hard to prevent anyone else from possessing it (see the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) - that's the big stick, resulting in North Korea tier sanctions. The trinkets were the carrot. Kazakhstan made a nuanced calculation of the risk of holding the enriched Uranium, concluded it wasn't worth it.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

> Trucks carrying almost 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium had just left a nuclear facility I see a small problem with this statement, and with the picture at the beginning of the article. Uranium is dense: 19.1 g/cm3. Enriched Uranium has a similar density, within a +/- 2% from "normal" Uranium. It means that a cube of 600kg of enriched Uranium would be approx. 31cm x 31cm x 31cm. You don't need "trucks" for that.

thealistra 5y ago
have you taken into account the box to keep it safe to handle?
- jpgvm 5y ago
  ... and the shielding to keep you safe from it and the fact that you need to package it into smaller chunks to prevent criticality, etc.
  - grosswait 5y ago
    …and back to the mere weight and density. Yeah, it’ll fit in the back of your hatchback, but after dragging the rear for a few minutes, one good bump might punch it right through the floor.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
Hmm. I wonder if there’s any downside to storing too much enriched uranium in a single solid cube.
- choeger 5y ago
  I cannot think of anything supercritical...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

starwind 5y ago

If anyone wants a detailed history of nuclear and biological weapons during the Cold War and the early post-Cold War days, I highly recommend The Dead Hand by David Hoffman

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

... use it as fuel? If we had a modular MSR reactor we could cart it there and "burn" it. Otherwise can't you just de-enrich it by mixing in other Uranium isotopes and send it the usual way to the nuclear solid fuel rod monopoly? Is what they actually mean is "it's REALLY valuable since it's already enriched weapons-grade, so how do we keep it until someone "safe" pays for it."?