From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sun Sep 29 2002 - 03:05:12 MDT
On Sat, 28 Sep 2002, spike66 wrote:
> The 23 pounds might be right, assuming no high
> explosive shape charges to supercompress the
> metal and no slow neutron sources.
>
> The fact that the package shown is elongated makes
> it believable that they really managed to confiscate
> 15 kg of U235. If this is true, (note that it has
> been reported by both BBC and CNN) then my estimates
> of the probability of a U.S. city being nuked in the
> next decade just went up several percent. Oy vey! spike
Critical mass for 93.5% HEU U-235 are 48 kg total weight for bare sphere,
18.4 kg if surrounded by a 10 cm thick natural U8 tamper, or 14.1 kg if
surrounded 10 cm beryllium tamper (acts to reflect neutrons).
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