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Comments: 139 + - Technology: US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays on Friday July 30, @10:19PM
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Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times covers a report released by the National Research Council, which says the ability of the US to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding. The goals of the highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, is to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace. 'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns. 'Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.' The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities and argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises."
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What they're really saying with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, after a weapon is "used" there is a entire recipe of isotope signatures that can yield all sorts of information about the weapon design, source of the pit, yield, efficiency, etc... We got very good at that back in the 50's and 60's.
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Oh, after a weapon is "used" there is a entire recipe of isotope signatures that can yield all sorts of information about the weapon design, source of the pit, yield, efficiency, etc... We got very good at that back in the 50's and 60's.
What is really being said is that all the fissile material has decayed to such an extent that it all points to the U.S.; where's your technology now?
Single-mindedness (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if you realize how right you are about the way the USA does things. From the summary:
You know what else is fragile, under-resourced, and in many respects deteriorating? Our willingness to examine the connection between meddling in the affairs of soverign nations and their more radical factions' desire to go to extremes in order to attack us.
For those who feel inclined to speak about this without having done any research (like that stops anyone these days), I'll sum it up briefly. The USA has a habit of using its intelligence services to overthrow democratically elected officials in foreign countries and usually replaces them with dictators more favorable to its economic interests. Iran during the 1950s is a good example, though only one of many. Do a little research and it is easy enough to come up with several examples of this behavior.
Does anyone plan to argue that this does not constitute provocation in the eyes of those who suffer because of this practice? Yes, the way they retaliate is inhuman and reprehensible, particularly when they go after civilians. I fully agree with that. What I reject is the notion that "they hate us because of our freedoms". I think it's more like, they hate us because they want to be left alone. If that's the case, and if our goal is to end this sort of terrorism, our first responsibility is to end the practices of ours that encourage it. Then we are in a better position to go after the people who persist and come up with better ways to deter them.
If anyone wants a list that they can start researching, I found a decent one here [wordpress.com]. It's just a list to help you get started. If you want to be informed on this subject you will have to do your own research. If you take the time to do that, however, what will amaze you is how little retaliation there has been.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Get this: Osama Bin Laden hates music. He considers it a tool of the devil.
Which just emphasises how insane the US policy of meddling in terrorism by funding and training him, and others of the same type, actually was.
they want us to stop supporting the Saudi government
One of the reasons Saudi Arabia produces so many fundamentalists, especially rich fundamentalists who support global terrorism, is that it is a fundamentalist state in the first place. Do you really think that actively supporting the status quo in the country that is the major source of funding for Islamic fundamentalism is going to have any result other than providi
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On the other hand its fine for Palestine to disappear, its humane for a Palestinian man to be convicted for rape because he had pretended to be Jewish, its OK to steal people's homes.
Who said that is ok? Come on, you are reading things that no one said. Come on, improve your reading comprehension.
Which just emphasises how insane the US policy of meddling in terrorism by funding and training him, and others of the same type, actually was.
Or maybe it emphasizes that we shouldn't have abandoned Afghanistan after kicking the oppressive Russian government out, and should have stayed around to build schools and not let the bad guys take over?
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When the only example you cite is a well known one from sixty years ago... all that does is make you look like a loon.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you stop blathering for a minute, and actually "do the research", you'll find pictures of US Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense, shaking hands, giving supporting speeches, and giving foreign aid to several dozen blooodthirsty dictators which enslaved, imprisoned, or killed about 80 million of their own people.
Here's a short list:
Bao Dai
Ngo Dinh Diem
Chiang Kai-shek
Park Chung Hee
Chun Doo Hwan
Laurent Kabila
Idi Amin
General Sani Abacha
Francisco Franco
General Humberto Castelo Branco
Marco Vinicio Cer
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Personally, I root for the home team regardless. It's a Hobbesian war of all vs. all, not some United Federation of Planets, kid.
Once the thermonuclear device goes prompt critical, all bets are off.
Re: (Score:2)
If you think the US is evil for trying to get rid of, say, the East German Communist government or the Afghanistan Soviet puppet state, you are transridiculous.
Not the former, but certainly the latter. Unfortunately the US did nothing significant to overthrow the former.
The communist government of Afghanistan was far preferable to any of its Islamic fundamentalist successors.
You are implicitly arguing funding and training the Taliban and Al-Quaeda was the right thing to do. I disagree, and think it was both stupid and evil.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think there would be a nuking just knee-jerk unless people are SURE they know the real culprits.
You know how many crackpots have dreams of being able to nuke country "A", make it look like country "B", and watch the two go at it and completely annihilate each other? I'm sure a lot of countries would love to see the US, China, and Russia all go at it just for spite's sake, or perhaps even make a land grab on areas that are habitable after the large firecrackers have gone off and there is little to n
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I don't think there would be a nuking just knee-jerk unless people are SURE they know the real culprits.
You state your position succinctly in the first three words. "I don't think". Why do you "believe" that it will be a big player war? Look at all the whack jobs out there with nukes. Pakistan, India, Israel, Flying Spaghetti Monster knows which Arab faction wants/ has/ is willing to buy a nuke of any yield, did I forget to mention that Pakistan is an Islamic state? How about Russia (proper) vs. the Chechens/ Ukraines/ any other break-away state. Putin, Rasputin what's the difference?
I'm sure a lot of countries would love to see the US, China, and Russia all go at it
China goes after Taiwan;
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The way things are going, I kind of feel the same about a nuke going off in a US city. It's only a matter of time. I don't know how the country will respond to that, but I surely hope the person in charge does is more competent than the one in charge at 9/11 (though it is hard to imagine a person who is less competent: he went from the entire
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Silly me, I only flew to airports, and buzzed past buildings. I guess it's that whole self preservation instinct still working strong. :) It is fun to fly cross country using nothing but a compass and ground references. That, and no risk of actually crashing. :) I felt silly the first time, I made it all the way from LAX to TPA, and had to go
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In how many of those countries is there popular support for backing the US?
Fighting alongside the US was a significant contribution to Tony Blair's ejection from office, and the question in Britain now is not even "should we be in these wars?", but " whose fault is it that we got into this?".
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The problem is that the US gov. is the only "association" dumb enough to send a nuclear bomb to destroy a city.
Do you have any idea how stupid you just sounded?
Re:What they're really saying with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice job with the complete lack of understanding of WWII.
Should we have invaded the Japanese Mainland conventionally? The Battle of Okinawa saw 110,000 dead Japanese troops and 40,000 - 150,000 dead Okinawan civilians. Over 12,000 dead US troops.
And the second bomb was in case the first one didn't work.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The nuking of Japan wasn't about avoiding an invasion, it was first about preventing the Japanese from a separatist peace treaty with the USSR; and then about showing the USSR (and the rest of the world) who the boss is.
And the second bomb was to show the world there's more than one.
As for the report, it says that
U.S. nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved
and then, in the same breath
are fragile, underresourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,”
So, which is
Re:What they're really saying with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
The nuking of Japan wasn't about avoiding an invasion,
Ah, yes it was, actually.
it was first about preventing the Japanese from a separatist peace treaty with the USSR; and then about showing the USSR (and the rest of the world) who the boss is. And the second bomb was to show the world there's more than one.
I know your history TA told you that, but academics are rewarded for being clever, not for being right. The reason you hear this sort of pap in colleges is that there is no money in simply recording and sharing the truth - one must deconstruct, analyze, and make new angles, right or wrong. In this case - quite wrong.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You can easily ascertain the facts (which I've explained above) by perusing WWII documents, there's no need for TAs.
Reading through the decision of targeting committee is all you need to see that the goal of scaring the world, and testing the bomb is a primary motivation for using it.
Reading through the documents of US Strategic bombing survey (from 1946), which analyses the issue in detail should convince you bombings weren't necessary or decisive. Documents abound for the attempts of the Japanese govern
Re:What they're really saying with this story (Score:4, Informative)
United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report (Pacific War) was more of a argument in favor of funding for bombers over carriers than a definitive source to predict the outcome of an Allied Invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.
My sources for this subject include, but are not limited to
Douglas J. MacEachin, The Final Months of the War with Japan: Signals Intelligence, U.S. Invasion Planning, and the A-Bomb Decision
J.C.S. 1388 “Details of the Campaign Against Japan”
D. M. Giangreco "Operation Downfall (US Invasion Of Japan) US Plans And Japanese Counter-Measures"
Joint War Plans Committee, Details of the Campaign Against Japan
General Headquaters, US Armed Forced Pacific, Military Intelligence Summery, General Staff “Amendment No. 1 to G-2 Estimate of the Enemy Situation with Respect to Kyushu (dated 25 April 1945), 29 July 1945
Parent
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
Since he's very right. I'm tired of morons twisting well-known historical facts just to fit into whatever flawed ideology they support.
The Japanese (be they military or civilians) were ashamed and forbidden to surrender yet had no way of avoiding defeat. The only possible outcome from an American invasion of the mainland Japan would have been millions of killed and suicided Japanese (both military and civilians) and hundreds of thousand of US forces being killed in the process. The only way out was the word
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Why would we care if the Japanese made a separate peace with the USSR? It's not like the USSR was actually fighting the Japanese until just after Hiroshima was bombed (the Soviets declared war on Japan on 9 AUG 1945, the day that Nagasaki was bombed)...
Note, for record, that the USSR was NEUTRAL in the war between the USA and Japan. Which, among other things produced the oddity of the Japanese not mucking with Lend/Lea
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Why would we care if the Japanese made a separate peace with the USSR?
Truman was already planning to fight the spread of world communism at the time. The threat of the Soviet Army occupying the parts of China that were under Japanese rule was serious enough.
Note, for record, that the USSR was NEUTRAL in the war between the USA and Japan.
Yep, and, for the record, Roosevelt and Stalin have already agreed that USSR will attack Japan; when Roosevelt died, Truman took his place, and decided that inviting USS
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The atomic bombs on Japan were very much about avoiding the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.
Throughout 1944 and 1945, despite the attrition of Japan's power, the Imperial Japanese Army was able to inflict more casualties on American forces with each battle.
The balance of American forces set in invade on 1 November 1945 were most likely not sufficient to defeat the IJA without massive casualties, higher casualties than were inflicted by the atomic bombings.
Furthermore, after the defenses of Warsaw, Ber
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Nope, they weren't. If you look at the political events and commentaries of the decision makers of the time, and the context in which decisions were made, and focus on those that lead to the decision, not papers written in the 90s, it is quite plain to see that threat of USSR occupation was the only reason why nukes were used.
USSR had, in accordance with the Stalin-Roosevelt agreements in Yalta, moved an army to the East which destroyed the Japanese forces in China in days -- the same army you seem to think
Re:What they're really saying with this story (Score:5, Insightful)
Using what for a Navy? What landing craft and what supporting aircraft carriers and naval gunfire ships? What freighters and tankers for a supply train? The Soviet Navy in its entirety in June 1941 counted zero aircraft carriers, 2 battleships of 1909 design, 2 cruisers, 25 destroyers, 7 escort vessels, and 68 submarines. It hadn't grown much by August 1945, save in destroyers and submarines. I can't locate any evidence that they had any ocean capable landing craft at all. They most definitely had zero experience with mounting a seaborne invasion.
The US Navy on 14 August 1945 counted 28 fleet aircraft carriers, 71 light and escort aircraft carriers, 23 battleships, 72 cruisers, 377 destroyers, 361 frigates and destroyer escorts, 232 submarines; 6768 total vessels, including thousands of landing craft.
As others have noted, the Soviets could have savaged the Japanese army in Manchuria, but mounted an invasion of an island nation of around 100 million people? Not in anyone's dreams. Not for a long, long time after 1945. They had a large submarine force which could have choked off Japanese imports, but US submarines and other naval craft and airplanes had already done that. And none of this is to say that after annihilating Japanese forces in Manchuria, the Soviets might not have offered surrender terms which the Japanese would have accepted, particularly in light of US forces choking off all trade and imports.
The true alternative to the nuclear bombing would never have been a fanciful Soviet invasion of the home islands. It was the complete destruction of the Japanese Navy, merchant marine, and war-making industries which had already been virtually completed by the US by that time. Starvation and continued conventional aerial devastation would have been the only future the Japanese could look forward to. The loss of Japanese life even absent an invasion could have been catastrophic, completely dwarfing the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The losses to have been expected on both sides in the event of a US invasion have been extensively quoted, and there is no need to list them here.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Japan was out of fuel and unable to continue fighting... The Japanese were no longer a threat to anyone but there was a worry that the Russians might have invaded if they were not taken out quickly. The time for a real test of the bomb was running out as once the war ended it would not be possible to test it on real people and future test would have to return to the desert. So a nice virgin target was bombed. Nothing to do with war, it was just science. Read Children of the Ashes to get an insight into
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It didn't take reading many post Soviet Afgahnistam books to learn out that the ISI has always been interested in double crossing anyone they work with.
Neutron Signatures (Score:2)
I imagine that they are looking for neutron ratios and possibly gamma energy levels?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
that's old hat. it's all about subspace tachyons these days.
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I imagine that they are looking for neutron ratios and possibly gamma energy levels?
Silly rabbit, that's old hat.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is hardly rocket science. You get a sample from each reactor and perform an AMS* run on it. This gives you a fingerprint for that reactor. You get a sample from a nuclear weapon (pre-detonation or post-detonation) or fallout from debris (as in the case of Chernobyl) and perform an AMS* run on that.
*You can also look for specific gamma energies.
My A-Level computer science project could take the masses or energies and correctly infer which isotopes were present, in what ratios, and which reactor the sample likely came from. It double-checked by looking for daughter isotopes (decay products), since there are isotopes that look similar but follow different decay paths. I wrote that in less than a year in Turbo Pascal for the IBM PC.
And the US Government is now saying that all of its nuclear labs combined can't either write their own frigging version, don't have the books I worked from, and don't have any AMS equipment to collect fresh data as needed?
If they are that stupid and incompetent in relation to my talent and skills, when can I expect them to hand Sandia over to my care?
Oh, they're not? Then maybe there's something seriously dodgy about their claim.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Sandia is not the design lab you are looking for. You are confusing them with Los Alamos and Livermore.
I respect the fact that you have a four digit UID, but the problem is not as trivial as you make it out to be.
Parent
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every reactor produces unique isotopes. It's an absolutely unique fingerprint. It will be present in the plutonium (unless you are suggesting that someone is going to refine plutonium to near 100%) and has been used for decades. Air monitors during the cold war would harvest particles of radioactive debris from surface testing, permitting identification of which reactor the material was from.
Almost nobody actually makes a pure uranium bomb. Horribly inefficient stuff. You need a lot of it to do anything, which immediately makes missiles impractical. Even if you did use uranium, the impurities would give away which mine it came from. Again, that is unique.
No, I said Sandia because they do more interesting work. Los Alamos is, frankly, dull.
(I have a 4-digit ID, yes, but far more importantly I was taught by an expert in radio-chemistry - which is why I was able to do said A-level project - who had been working on this kind of stuff since the 70s. He had fully automated radioisotope analysis down to a fine art by 1979.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Would part of the problem be that they suspect that there are breeder reactors for which they do not have the appropriate data?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
They would be able to tell that a given sample was from a fast-breeder reactor, they'd also be able to tell that it was not one they'd got data for and they'd probably be able to tell which uranium mine the ore was from (there aren't many and no more are likely to be discovered at any depth we have the technology to operate at at this time). Since the fingerprint is unique, and since radioactive waste is awfully hard to get rid of subtly, it would be extremely quick and easy to find where the reactor was.
An example of just how hard it is to hide these kinds of signatures -- the Russian who was poisoned by Polonium in London some years back. They can identify not only which reactor but which reactor vessel that Polonium came from. And that was with a very very trace sample. (As I recall, it was identified within a few hours of it being established Polonium was used.) Polonium has a half-life of 138.376 days. Since Britain closed Daresbury's 20MeV tandem accelerator, the options for doing a high-resolution run would have been limited, but they would certainly have been able to tell to within a day or two when the Polonium had been produced.
THAT is the kind of fingerprinting that can be done. Hell, even with my A-Level project software, I was able to isolate almost every radioisotope in the Chernobyl fallout from just the gamma signatures and no AMS at all. (Every radioisotope not only has a unique mass, it also has a unique energy signature.)
What would it take to get a sample for analyzing? Well, you get a bucket that you can open and close at both ends. You lower it into the water and take a sample. There won't be much plutonium or uranium floating near the surface, but there'll be enough even a few feet below to analyze. Back in 1978, that's how most of the research on the nuclear waste in the Irish Sea was done - with buckets, string, a dinghy and someone to keep look-out. Nothing fancier was needed and the results were staggeringly good. An actual core sample from the radioactive sludge would not have given you better results.
The thing is, it's almost impossible for a reactor to not release enough waste for it to be (a) identified as a nuclear reactor, and (b) listed alongside its radioisotope signature. No country - USA and Russia included - has ever successfully hidden a reactor. At least, not for more than about a week. And the kit needed by a radiochemist to do any serious work is virtually nothing. At the time of Chernobyl, it was possible to take a mobile lab up to any farm in the Cumbrian hills and do studies of soil, lichen and sheep. If the US Navy can't fit such a lab into a small manned submersible or even an ROV, it's their own damn fault.
Parent
As dumb as Americans can be... (Score:3, Funny)
... I am sure that you can't replace the entire US nuclear forensics programme with an 18 year old with an A level in Computer Science. I'm guessing there's a few folk with PhDs and the like in their organisation who are doing more than playing darts and watching day time tv. What do you think? Is it all a con? could it be replaced by a single teenaged student?
What's the half life (Score:4, Funny)
Fifteen years ago they had full capabilities, but only five years later their capacity was cut in half. Then, in 2005 they found that their capabilities were down to 25%. Today they are working at 12.5% effectiveness. At this point their capabilities are so degraded they have no idea what will be left in 2015.
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The real question is, what is the decay product and where is all that radiation being vented?
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'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' Fifteen years ago they had full capabilities, but only five years later their capacity was cut in half. Then, in 2005 they found that their capabilities were down to 25%. Today they are working at 12.5% effectiveness. At this point their capabilities are so degraded they have no idea what will be left in 2015.
And who caused that, O'bama? Yeah, right.
I'm no physicist... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no physicist, but the first thing that came to mind--without having any idea how they actually track this stuff--is doping.
One would think that the places that produced this stuff would automatically fingerprint it by doping the material with rare elements, stuff that can only be produced in expensive labs or the nuclear plants themselves--such as Neptunium and Protactinium. Just enough of the elements, and in proportions specific to the place of origin, to ID the source of the product.
Whether or not this stuff would be intact and usable for identification purposes after a detonation, no idea, but it would at least allow for confirmation-of-source on materials before they are actually incorporated into a device. And, lets face it, this is the time we want to be identifying sources--not when we are taking ground-zero samples.
Well duh! (Score:2)
Half-life decay!
Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
... we could just blame Iran for whatever and save a buttload on that nerdy nuclear forensics.
Identity Theater (Score:2)
This is a big, fat, hairy deterrent to developing nuclear arms. "This terrorist nuke came from (spin the wheel on hated regimes du jour!) Dumfucistan! Dumfucistan, here's a million tons of conventional ordinance dropped on the head of each and every last goat-herder inside your borders and summary execution for your Prime Minister For Life and all his family! Congratulations, Dumfucistan! Meanwhile, Pakistan, we're still all good friends, right? It wasn't your rogue intelligence service that slipped Osama a
Maybe they shouldn't have announced it to everyone (Score:2)
The implication is that a large part of the deterrent is the belief that the US can determine exactly where the nuke came from, and reply in kind. By announcing that that ability is decaying, that deterrent is completely undermined.
While obviously it's better if we can actually do what we say we can, it's the belief that we can that (theoretically) keeps people in check.
The nuclear establishment and its problems (Score:2)
The US once had a huge nuclear weapons establishment - Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Hanford, Sandia, Lawerence Livermore, Rocky Flats, and a other big installations, most dating from WWII. Today, the major activity at most of those sites dealing with toxic waste. Almost everyone who ever designed a working nuclear weapon is retired or dead. The US hasn't built a major power reactor in decades. Smart young people don't go into nuclear engineering or nuclear physics. There's just no demand for new work in th
Re: (Score:2)
US federal government agencies are inept when it comes to a lot of things. (No political bias intended). Take a look at recent defense acquisition programs, business and wall street regulation... The virtues of "strong leadership [and] careful planning" seem to be in short supply thoughout the system.
And who caused that, O'bama? Yeah, right.