Senator Charles Schumer who came out against the Iran
nuclear deal has repeated – in a speech he gave at New York University on
August 11, 2015 – the saying that one of the reasons he rejects the deal is
that some components for making an atom bomb do not involve nuclear isotopes.
This was a response to the criticism that a 24 days notice
given to the Iranians about an impending inspection is not something to worry
about because nuclear material leaves traces that last thousands of years. And
so, Schumer responded that 24 days will give the Iranians enough time to hide
or remove the non radio-active components. The problem is that he did not say
what components he had in mind.
Well, perhaps the senator doesn't know that once you have
the nuclear material enriched to the desired level – something he is not
raising questions about – it will take no more than a small shop to make the
rest of the components and assemble them into a bomb. The equipment you'll need
will be of the regular machine shop type; nothing more sophisticated than that.
In addition, you'll need a high performance multi-trace oscilloscope, and small
charge capacitors.
Three or four decades ago, you might have had a difficult
time getting your hands on that type of oscilloscopes and that type of
capacitors because the world was mostly analogue, and marching at megacycle
speeds. Today, however, the world is mostly digital, and marching at teracycle
speeds. This has turned those oscilloscopes and those capacitors into shelf
items, putting them at the disposal of anyone that wants them. To spot them in
a shop might heighten someone's level of curiosity, but they do not constitute
proof that something nefarious has been going on here.
But really, what can you do with an oscilloscope of that
kind, and a bunch of small charge capacitors? Well, you can use the capacitors
to design a mechanism that delivers an electric charge to several points
simultaneously. And you can use the oscilloscope to see how simultaneous the
timing is.
To understand how important this is, you need to know that a
conductor, such as a wire, has three properties that can be measured. They are:
resistance, inductance and capacitance. Each of these plays a role in
determining the speed with which an electric current moves in a conductor. When
detonating a nuclear bomb, you need to shrink the size of the uranium ball at
its core to raise its critical mass, ensure that a chain reaction will take
place and that it will be sustained. You do this using dynamite that squeezes
the ball on many sides simultaneously.
If the electric charge that ignites the dynamite is not
delivered at the exact same moment to all the sides, the part that gets
squeezed first will release the sub-atomic particles at a rate dense enough to
start the chain reaction (which is another way to say nuclear explosion). But
this alone will not be enough to sustain the chain reaction because the heat
generated by the explosion will melt the rest of the uranium ball before all the
sides had had the time to get squeezed. And you'll end up with a low yield
nuclear explosion or even a dud.
The way to fix this problem is to add capacitors of the
correct size to the circuitry so as to make all the sides receive the electric
charge at the same time. Once you test this, and the oscilloscope shows that
you have the right combination, you still need to conduct an experiment where
real dynamite – or any kind of high yield chemical explosive – is used.
You will not, however, use a core that is made of
radio-active material. Instead, you will use a metal of comparable density such
as lead, for example. With this, you will determine whether or not your
mechanism can squeeze the core hard enough to give it a higher mass – high
enough to be critical when it is uranium.
To do this, you do not need to be in a shop. In fact, miners
and construction workers use explosives all the time, and if you want to
conduct a clandestine experiment, you can use that as cover to do it. You will
collect the data you need to see if the firing mechanism as well as the
dynamite you'll be using in the detonation of the nuclear core, work as well as
expected. And no one will know or even suspect what you're doing.