4 ms·
> in secret is impossible without the whole world knowing. I'm curious about why this is Outside of an actual test detonation, presumably this could all happe
by electronsoup 4mo ago
> in secret is impossible without the whole world knowing.
I'm curious about why this is
Outside of an actual test detonation, presumably this could all happen in a secure place?
- 15155 4mo agoEspionage.
- daveguy 4mo agoIt requires very large, high powered centrifuges and tons of uranium. Requires an infrastructure project that is visible from space, even underground. And projects that large are difficult to keep secret anyway.
- fragmede 4mo agoyou're not supposed to spell it out loud. next thing you'll be saying that a gun type nuclear bomb is easier to build than an implosion type nuclear bomb, and then we'll all be off to the races. I mean camps I mean wait shit.
- daveguy 4mo agoAny large and well resourced enough entity that is interested in building a nuclear weapon already knows how difficult it is to enrich uranium to purity levels necessary for a weapon. It's not exactly a secret.
- odo1242 4mo agoYou need enough people to work on it that some information will leak, and the facilities needed to build nuclear power are pretty big (uranium refinement, etc.), big enough to be visible on satellite footage. Mostly the first point.
- microtonal 4mo agoMy guess would be that sales of the high-tech gear you need, like Uranium centrifuges, are strongly sales/export controlled. Probably someone would also notice if you start mining Uranium ore.
- Aspos 4mo agoCentrifuges dont need to be mechanically sophisticated and, frankly, do not require tech which did not exist in the 50es.
- AngryData 4mo agoYou need highly educated individuals, a massive amount of energy expenditure, a massive facility to house your centrifuges, and an active mine to dig up nuclear materials. It isn't impossible to keep such a secret, but practically it would be incredibly difficult just through the energy requirements and mining scale which would be hard to hide without anybody asking what exactly are you mining and processing.
- lightedman 4mo ago"mining scale" Don't need much area, depends on the concentration of radioactives. I have a small mine that's just a pegmatite body about the size of a house which produces almost marble-sized chunks of a thorium-uranium mixed metamict mineral (I suspect samarskite but Raman and XRD can't give any ID,) you'd barely notice it from a private airplane's typical flying height, however you could dig the entirety of it up and you'd have enough unprocessed uranium for some real fun.
- literalAardvark 4mo agoYou could only somehow sell it. If you tried to enrich that you'd get flagged so fast your head would spin.
- why_at 4mo agoFor an example of how closely this is monitored see the Oklo fossil reactors[1] The proportion of fissile isotopes being mined was off by a fraction of a percent, which caused the French government to launch an investigation. It turns out that millions of years ago the site had formed a natural fission reactor which depleted some of the fissile isotopes [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...