Making a Real Killing
"Just as huge nuclear explosions result from small spheres of plutonium, the story of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colorado, is much larger than itself. It is about the Church family, who came west seeking gold in 1861, stayed to raise cattle, watched the federal government take a large piece of its land for the weapons plant in 1951 - and now is busily developing real estate in the booming suburbs next to the contaminated plant site. It is about the government and private corporations that produced the deadliest devices in history for thirty-seven years, concealed problems behind the wall of national security secrecy, and came close to a Chernobyl-scale disaster during a 1969 fire. It is about plant managers who cut corners to maintain weapons production, workers who saw themselves as loyal Cold War soldiers, and citizen activists who challenged the plant's very existence. And it is about a community that profited from thousands of jobs and contracts but now faces long-term environmental and health risks."--BOOK JACKET.
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- Thanks. Adding that book to my list.
Two other good books about early nuclear weapon manufacturing: “Plutopia” and “Making a real killing: Rocky flats and the nuclear west”. Plutopia focuses on Hanford and is quite eye opening. It also compares and contrasts the early American and Soviet programs
- "Typical design is two piles of uranium in a container, separated by a lead wall."
Even the simplest nuclear weapons design is slightly more involved than that - the gun-based design used in the "Little Boy" bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used an actual section of gun barrel to fire one chunk of uranium at the other.
More modern designs of fission bombs, either as stand-alone weapons or as primaries for H-bombs, are actually pretty complex - balancing the need to be efficient (plutonium and U235 are rather expensive), light, robust and safe is a non-trivial problem.
The W88 warhead with its prolate (egg-shaped) primary is the most advanced nuclear weapon that has had design details leaked to the public:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88
In the case of the Sum of All Fears the terrorists were trying to build a strategic level bomb (i.e. hundreds of kt) using a fusion boosted fission design to try and start a global war - so they were actually trying to build something relatively advanced, not just a basic bomb.
Edit: Another real problem with working with plutonium is that it is fairly nasty stuff to deal with - I can recommend the book "Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West" to get some idea of the horrors of working with plutonium on an industrial scale:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Real-Killing-Rocky-Nuclear/dp/0...
- I can recommend this book that describes the history of the Rocky Flats plant just outside Denver and the various accidents that happened there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_a_Real_Killing:_Rocky_Fl...
