Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:01:29 -0500
From: "Mike B." <yahoo at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: weaponized ping-pong balls
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 2/11/2013 9:37 PM, mark wrote:
> On 02/11/13 15:22, Mike B. wrote:
>> On 2/11/2013 9:55 AM, Barry Newton wrote:
>>> Ping pong balls, phooey!  I understand that if you search hard enough,
>>> you can find detailed plans for nuclear bombs.  And possibly receive
>>> visits from earnest young men in bad suits.
>>
>> Probably not anymore...not since Analog published details of the entire
>> procedure, including where and how to get fissionable materials.  Not
>> sure what year that was...sometime in the late 80s I think.
>>
>> It wasn't a really big bomb...only about 10 Kt...and it wasn't portable
>> (it filled the basement of a house), but it wasn't too hard to
>> build...if you had basic construction skills and enough expendable workmen.
>
> I liked the Mother Jones issue that published it. It looked like so much
> fun, putting the material to be centrifuged into a bucket, standing in
> your living room, and spinning around holding the bucket for half an
> hour....

Obviously a different article.  The Analog one was actually
possible...though the main point was to show now not-easy it was.
Refinement of the Uranium was done using gas diffusion through long
pipes, after converting the Uranium to Uranium-hexa-flouride (I think
that's what they specified).  That was one of the stages you needed a
bunch of expendable workmen for...

-- Mike B.