U.S. Publishes Guide To Building Atom Bombs To Web 310
Jeff writes "The New York Times is reporting that the feds have shut down the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal' due to concerns from weapons experts that the 'papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.' One diplomat is quoted as saying, 'If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.' Indexes to older (less sensitive) documents (and some html from pdfs) are still cached at Google today. Rep. Pete Hoekstra pushed for the public release of the archive to help determine 'whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them'. Critics have said the archive was created to perpetuate misinformation about WMDs."
what is an "atom bomb to web"? (Score:4, Funny)
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Using the American translation, "atom bomb to web" acts something like a neutron bomb, in that it vaporizes all the Bush Administration claims that Saddam had WMDs, without damaging any infrastructure.
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then all your bombs are belong to Atom.
Dwat and double dwat... (Score:2)
Re:Dwat and double dwat... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Build nuclear reactor in home
2) Melt down reactor
3) Turn into giant radiactive monster
4) Take next door neighbor's lawnmower and plasma TV while you are hulked out. Not a damn thing he can do about it.
5) Profit!
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I wish I had mirrored the site, because I'm curious just how explicit these documents are. I wonder if they're more explicit than what I was able to find on google [slashdot.org] for a previous Slashdot post.
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If you're a genius, you wouldn't need instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb, now would you?
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Well, when I was in highschool, about sophomore or junior year, my physics teacher gave us detailed instructions on how to make a home-made atomic bomb.
That's right, the whole bloody class.
But since security measures involved required quite a lot of heavy concrete blocks or about as much soft tissue damage from the radioactivity, we gave it a pass.
After a careful consideration, of course. The opportunity to bomb your school is not lightly missed.
Then again, when you have an atomic bomb, you don't exactl
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Nuclear bombs for Dummies (Score:2)
Yes. In fact, it was the title of this book which inspired his drive to build the bomb, and due to translation problems he thinks the title refers to a proposed trade, not a type of reader. He hopes to trade the bombs for something he can really use: sex dolls.
.torrent? (Score:3, Informative)
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Exactly; obtaining weapons grade uranium or plutonium is the hard part. Building a crude atomic bomb isn't as difficult. I'm not saying that it is easy, but some of the designs (gun type) are not that sophisticated.
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A sophisticated design means higher yield or more bombs for a given inventory of fissionables, and maybe lighter bombs more suitable for use on a missile.
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Remember North Korea's nuclear fizzle just a couple of weeks ago? Do you think they intended to build a bomb with about 1/40th the power of the first US nuclear test?
Why do you think the People's Republic of China worked so hard to steal the plans for the W88 thermonuclear warhead from the United States?
Nuclear weapons engineering is just like any other branch of engineering. There are theor
Materials (Score:2)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
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Axis of Evil? (Score:2, Funny)
Um, "Short circuit"? (Score:2, Informative)
I guess we have to assume he means "would be a short cut past a lot of things," presumably some re-inventing-the-wheel R&D that was done 50 years ago and has been repeated in Pakistan, India, and now North Korea (where you can get a free pizza with any weapon you buy, as long as you pay shipping). Worrying about it seems a little silly since the Khan network had already done a fair business in selling complete, down-to-the-schematics and Home Dep
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Who knows: the plans could be for working and economical uranium enrichment technologies, not the nukes themselves. As has been repeated ad nauseum, working nukes aren't that hard to build. More difficult problems are: (a) enriching uranium or extracting plutonium (b) making the nukes reasonably efficient. However, with a suff
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So that's how they can keep them warm and bubbly during trans-atlantic container shipment. I'd wondered about that.
Predictable. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, nevermind that righty-blogs were falling all over themselves pressing for the release of these. Somehow, they were convicned that opening these documents would unleash an "Army of Davids," and the President pushed to have the documents declassified and published before anyone had the chance to read them. Now that it turns out that, oops, hey, instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb are in there, Andrew Card is blaming - who else? - the NYT [thinkprogress.org].
And this is after they'd already found instructions on how to make sarin in there.
Unbelievable.
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BUT you're saying that it is instructions for someone ELSE to build a bomb within a year.
Ummm, I suggest you stop letting your politics interfere with your reasoning. Either one statement is true, or the other is true. Both cannot be true.
And if the first is true, then I guess Bush was right for invading after all?
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If you look carefully...
No, wait.
If you have a brain you can see that these are not contradictory statements.
Saddam could easily have had the plans but not the means.
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Where you're correct: Yes, I am saying Saddam did not have the ability to build a bomb in less than a year. And I am also saying that the documents contained instructions on how to build a bomb, although I wouldn't care to speculate on a time frame.
Here's why you're utterly mistaken: the instructions were from 1991.
The
Duelfer (Score:2)
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I thought that I read that the Duelfer Report also talked about how, although the weapons programs were not up and running, Saddam was hoping to use the oil for food program to wiggle his way out of inspections and international pressure? Saddam was hoping that once that happened he could resume the research and development of WMD. We now know that the oil for food payoffs were working. Thankfully we will never know when the next step would have been.
Yeah, the whole country might have ended up a disaster
bad link (Score:2)
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I linked to a site which had a video of Andrew Card, on The Today Show, blaming the New York Times, with an accompanying transcript.
I understand that all the progressive over there might scare you, but come on, it's W's former chief of staff being interviewed by Matt Lauer on that video. Surely you can brave the scary hippie vibes long enough to click play.
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There's nothing truly progressive about the partisan, reactionary left. No more and no less than the partisan, reactionary right.
Won't make a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
The hard part is getting the enriched Uranium or Plutonium.
If you are able to design systems to refine either material, then its a cakewalk making the bomb.
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However, it might make a difference, since now al-Quaeda has access to these docs as well. If al-Quaida manages to also steal Uranium too, we will be in trouble. It's just another example how our government jeopardizes the
Securing material, not information, is the key. (Score:2)
The physics behind it aren't all that hard; if you can steal a nuclear weapon, I'm sure you can find some out-of-work nuclear engineer to help you draw up the plans. It's not as if the U.S. or even the West has a complete lock on that knowledge. There are probably thousands -- maybe more -- of people who would be capable of designing a nuclear we
Clarification (Score:2)
If al Qaeda (or anyone else) is capable of stealing enough enriched Uranium or Plutonium to achieve theoretical supercriticality, then their ability to build a bomb out of it ought to be basically assumed.
I.e., in designing our security precautions, we should err on the side of always assuming that the terrorists will know how to build a bomb, once they have the minimum set of physical obj
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Um.. Thermonuclear weapons are hard to make. REALLY hard. Fission-only weapons are pretty simple, but you have to avoid accidentally irradiating and killing yourself while building them. But a hydrogen bomb is not something that could be thrown together by anybody without very specific, deep knowledge of certain parts of physics, and a LOT of money and equipment. And the necessary knowledge is voluntarily kept secret by the few humans on the planet who actually know enough to build a working thermonuclear d
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Wrong. Designing a nuclear weapon is enormously difficult. The problem isn't the physics. The problem is the engineering. Most of the effort of the Manhattan Project was spent on engineering problems. They physics was solved by 1942, but
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Or a lower-yield nuclear blast. Modern nukes are designed so that failure to achieve perfect detonation results in little or no nuclear yield (for safety reasons, in the event of a bomber crash, for example). Older bombs, with a core closer to critical mass for its size were
Shouldn't headline read... (Score:2)
*yawn* (Score:2)
Response to this: (Score:2)
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra's reply:
It's a bit late. (Score:2)
Hmmm . . . (Score:2)
Another poster said that cryptome would probably have this at some point in the future, and it's a safe bet that they will.
Personally, I'm wondering if there's a google cache or wayback machine archive of the site. I need to go dig around because this is exactly the sort of information I need to have my laptop next time i take an international flight ;)
This is stupid (Score:2)
Basically, if you have enough resources to obtain the correct materials and the s
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Right - maybe the plans weren't for a bomb itself - it's easy enough to build a gun-type bomb with sizable yield. Maybe they were for working calutrons or other uranium enrichment technology that allows a nation to gain access to pure fissile material in sufficient quantities to build a nuke.
A few years ago there was a mass panic in some state because a kid did his science project on how to build an atomic bomb.
I think that there was
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The information on how to build an atomic bomb is already on the web.
Well, the very basic knowledge, gun method, explosive lensing, etc is well known to anyone that's read the Wikipedia entry. Detailed instructions on how to construct a nuclear trigger and fire all the charges at exactly the right time aren't. It's not a big deal in the sense that the knowledge isn't particularly hard to get. It's just kind of embarrassing for the Bush administration to have published this information themselves. Basica
Are those working plans? (Score:2)
-b.
The server was shut down...... (Score:2)
Big deal (Score:2)
A Page Full of Straw Men (Score:2)
This has nothing to with whether Saddam had WMDs when we went to war in this decade. All the intelligence that we have suggests that he was as close to nuclear weapons as a good university (i.e. the know-how but not the infrastructure).
The hard part (Score:2)
Takes One to Know One (Score:2)
We are doing everything we can to deploy that Star Wars missile-defense system
what about the 'missing' cargo ships (Score:2)
'whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them'
were there not a couple of mystery cargo ships that departed shortly before the war started and vanished? There was something on the news at the time about them, but they dissapeared ina region where there was nil chance of finding them if they'd been skuttled.
After that, no more mention, but if wmd existed, my money would go on them being on those ships.
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The alternate theory is that we knew they DID have WMDs at one point, because we sold them to them, and we don't know what they did with them. It certainly doesn't appear that they have them now.
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Jeez, I see my original post was modded flamebait. I was just trying to be funny. I hope that doesn't hurt my karma. I guess you can't joke about this stuff.
Lighten up guys, it's just nuclear weapons stuff.
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Sarcasm doesn't come across well in print. You have to be more blatant. (That's why emoticons were invented. B-) )
Granted your post was VERY blatant. But your parody was too close to what the moonbats are actually saying to be recognized by many of the posters here.
Flamebait? That should have been modded Funny. (Score:2)
But not even one post from somebody who read the parent as an obvious satire and sarcasm?
Geez, guys. Get a grip!
(I guess we have another example of sarcasm not coming across in print.)
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I guess it helps to understand satire if you're a rocket scientist!
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If they were, they were planted by the *first* Bush administration.
These documents are circa the first Gulf War.
Everyone knows Iraq was trying to get a nuclear bomb then. Whether or not they had/were seeking WMDs in the build-up to the current war with Iraq is still up to debate.
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Your logic is infallable... (Score:2)
That must mean all the bookmarks I have for product X are dead-on proof that I am planning to buy it, even though I already bought competing product Y. I'd better break out the credit card.
Holy crap, I just realized I have my tax returns in here! I know I sent a check in already, but unless I burn my copies I'll have to p
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But now that he's in jail, I seem to remember that he likes Cheetos.
If you think that is non-sensicle, just think about it a little more. A logic bomb of my own design.
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Hey, smart guy. Re-read this line:
Saddam was just keeping the documents around to donate to the Saddam Hussein Presidential Library for historical purposes *when his term was up*
Yeah. I think you need to retune your sarcasm meter.
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What Iraqi WMD program? (Score:2, Troll)
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Clearly you understand the power of "BushCo" to fake documents anytime, anywhere.
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To put this in perspective, let's say that there's a suspected child molester in your town. The police have been tipped off that he might have molested someone's kid, but they can't get any evidence of that actually happening, and the suspect will not allow police to search his property. An angry coalition of parents desce
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Bullshit. Someone else apparently wants to rewrite history.
Iraq: U.N. Inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction [fas.org] (Updated October 7, 2003) (pdf format) Note particularly that while the inspections were taking place, and cooperation was good, the ONLY areas of contention were some ambiguities in Iraqi documents as far what was listed and what was shown.
Further, here is what ELBaradei is quot
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This is Iraq research from before the first Gulf war, before all sanctions were in place.
Iraq stopped all WMD programs after first Gulf war, and wasn't advancing them.
Even more importantly, they weren't giving this information to al-Quaida and every other nutball with Internet connection.
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Who said that? (Score:2)
a. No you do not "understand this correctly".
b. The NYT has never said that Saddam "never really had any WMDs". We know he had them. We sold them to him back during the Iran/Iraq w
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Perhaps in the same way they got their WMD technology in the first place: from us.
We most definitely provided Saddam with money, weapons, and training. In exchange he did our bidding and played hand-puppet for a while before he got delusions of grandeur and we had to put him back in his place, so to speak. (Note that I
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How (precisely) does someone get to the point of knowing enough about developing nukes that his notes are classified as sensitive, without actually trying to build those nukes himself?
Maybe some dumb country posts it to a website?
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Ask Japan [fas.org].
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Re:But I Thought They Didnt Exist? (Score:5, Informative)
These documents do not show anything new about what Saddam had or didn't have. They only show that while our government was willing to start a war just in case Saddam was dumb enough to give such designs to a terrorist group that hated him, our government is itself dumb enough to take those designs and give them to a terrorist group that hates us.
Bravo. Darwin awards for all!
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You mean this from the story?
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a) Posession of those documents is not proof of an ongoing weapons development program.
b) Possession of those documents is not proof of the technological capability of executing the instructions in those documents.
c) Possession of those documents is not proof of having the materials to execute said instructions, even if you have the capability.
Hell, I can download the instructions for any number of weapson *right now*. That's no basis for invading my home.
Seriously, get your head out of your ass.
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b) Possession of those documents is not proof of the technological capability of executing the instructions in those documents.
c) Possession of those documents is not proof of having the materials to execute said instructions, even if you have the capability.
True, but the Iraqi creation of the docs is proof of all of the above.
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Second off, those documents provide no evidence for a recent active weapons program.
Third, there's no evidence they even *authored* the documents. They could have come from anywhere.
Honestly, do you ever bother to *use* the brain you presum
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You are correct. Bush did lie to us, and Iraq had no functional WMDs at the time of the invasion. These are old documents from before the first Gulf War. Putting them out now helps Bush lie again with the implication that there were WMDs and also helps the administration give valuable research to real terrorists for free. So not only did he lie then, but he is lying through implication again, as well as giving away nuclear secrets to terroris
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You wanna see lash out? (Score:2)
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Screw the NY Times article; I want to read your PDF!
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