I think we just learned what the development sequence will be for the Iranians: They will start with a heavy uranium bomb that limits their range, or they have to drop the amount of Uranium to make a bomb light enough to go the distance. As they improve they will add Plutonium to increase the yield while not reducing range. Then they will further incorporate Plutonium to maintain yield while reducing weight and increasing range. The limit will then be reached regarding the max yield of their bombs based on the maximum amount of Plutonium they can use. Re-incorporating Uranium will allow for higher yields, but at the cost of missile range unless a new missile is deployed. And I haven't even mentioned how the Hydrogen bomb comes into this. And I will leave that for a later date.
The author of the Washington Post article got back to me and stated that "It is my understanding that Pakistan's existing stocks of HEU limits their ability to produce high-yield bombs and they need the plutonium to both shrink the size of their warheads to make them more accurate/travel longer, and deliver higher payloads." Now this makes sense, but its also 180 degrees around from what was said in the WaPo article. Using Plutonium in place of Uranium would allow you to reduce the weight of the warhead while maintaining the yield. This would allow for an increase in missile range over a similar yield Uranium warhead. And one must remember the Pakistani's started with all Uranium weapons. So the plutonium is used to shrink their bombs, to increase the range of their missiles, while not dropping the yield.
I think we just learned what the development sequence will be for the Iranians: They will start with a heavy uranium bomb that limits their range, or they have to drop the amount of Uranium to make a bomb light enough to go the distance. As they improve they will add Plutonium to increase the yield while not reducing range. Then they will further incorporate Plutonium to maintain yield while reducing weight and increasing range. The limit will then be reached regarding the max yield of their bombs based on the maximum amount of Plutonium they can use. Re-incorporating Uranium will allow for higher yields, but at the cost of missile range unless a new missile is deployed. And I haven't even mentioned how the Hydrogen bomb comes into this. And I will leave that for a later date. The Washington Post had an article today on the increasing size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Like a recent article from the Daily Beast suggesting that the US had the means to bombard Japan with over a dozen nukes in 1945, I am seriously wondering who is putting out this stuff.
Not that I question the number of nuclear weapons Pakistan might create over the next decade, to suggest they will exceed China is truly questionable since many analyst question how many China have now (as in that the official number is too low). And further to believe it would stay static as Pakistan makes more nukes is in itself questionable (I'll throw in China just tested a new ICBM with Multiple warhead capability). But the bigger question I have is why this article would list Uranium weapons as low yield and Plutonium as high yield. From my research its the other way around. When you use Plutonium you have a maximum amount of material you can use of around 18 lbs. Some would say I am wrong since you need 22 lbs for critical mass, but thats a ceiling you must never reach. When using an implosion design all the material is in one big ball shape at the start. Thus if you use a critical-mass of material, it will chain react in our face as you finish assembling the bomb. And if you try to use all plutonium in a gun assembly the chances are very high you will get a fissile (a very low yield). So the max yield of an all plutonium weapon is around 40 kilotons. For uranium the opposite is true since the critical mass of uranium is 128 lbs. . This means you have more material to fission allowing for a higher yield. In the late 40s, a shortage of Plutonium from Hanford caused the US government to experiment with mixing Plutonium and uranium into one core. The result was we could produce more bombs in a given time frame and the yield of the bombs went up compared to their pure plutonium versions. Then in 1952 we completely replaced the Plutonium core of the Mk-6 bomb with uranium (as much as we dared pack in). The result was the Mk-18 or Super-ORalloy with a yield of 500 kilotons. This device was tested in 1952, shot King, Operation Ivy. Thus my concern over the source of the information for the Washington Post article. Like the Daily beast report, which suggested we had enough material for over 12 bombs, when in truth we barely had enough material for three additional bombs (and that was by the end of the year). Nuclear myths seem to be the norm now given the continuing myth that suitcase nukes are impossible. Its what truly makes me worried about this Iran agreement, just how much of this agreement is based on modern nuclear mythos. Someone sent me an nondescript Email, no fancy embosing and such, but claiming to be the IRS. It first asked for my employee ID on my W2, then it asked for my Social, date of birth and address. Some people would do this automatically. At least this one didn't tell me to cough up the money in a gift card format and send it to them. This one said it was working with Craigslist, Monster and career Builder to survey both employed and unemployed to gather data for unemployment data.
What is the problem with that: outside of the fact its a non-water mark, no symbol white paper Email with a .com address instead of a .gov. First, they don't need my W-2 ID; they just need to know, yes or No, if I am working. If I am working, then in what field. If I am not working, what is my education level and in what field was I previously employed. And finally, if I am in school for a new degree or not. None of these things were asked, just the information needed to steal my identity. Oh, and of course check who it was sent to, in this case it was sent to a Gmail account which was then hacked to spam other Email. Thus finding the person who sent it probably would be difficult. Having spent over a decade working threaded fasteners for Boeing when I hear about a failure involving such items I take note. Unfortunately, the Tee connector that caused this Air Force failure is not a nut, but improper tightening procedures is probably to blame. Of course I suspect when L3 went looking for its fastener engineer to ask what happened or how to correct it they probably found they no longer had such a person. In the quest for Lean-Mean engineering teams the support engineering has been discarded and designers have been tasked to determine installation procedures for their assemblies. When I interviewed with SpaceX over five years ago they didn't want me because all their designers did fastener selection. Besides, as they said, the strongest fastener was the hi-lok pin (which would get a chuckle from some, dropped jaws from others). The reason I mention Space X, Its Falcon 1 launch on march 25th 2006 ended in failure due to a nut failure. Originally they said the nut wasn't properly tightened (like the Air Force incident). In truth they had used an aluminum nut in cryogenic conditions which caused the nut to snap on lift-off. I would never have approved of such a material nut under those conditions.
Michael Savage lately has been ranting against Liberals and feminists who say nothing about the destruction of the ancient ruins in Palmyra Syria or the treatment of women captives by ISIS. The fact is this is a long standing Liberal policy.
Back in the days of the Taliban controlling Afghanistan Women were thrown into clothing that works in Saudi Arabia, but was worse then uncomfortable in the mountains of Afghanistan. Schools for girls were closed if not destroyed and girls attacked in the street. In 1984 a NG picture of an Afghan girl rouses the western world about the Soviet Invasion. But what happened in the 90s when the Russians left and the Taliban took over was unknown since even simple pictures like the NG cover photo were prohibited. When the Taliban then blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas the Left remained silent. When ancient sites were attacked that were connected to the Sufi sect of Islam, fromTimbuktu to Pakistan, the left remained silent. When the Golden Mosque in Iraq was attacked, a Shia site, the left remained silent. Now its Palmyra, and its being done for the same reason as the earlier Bamiyan Buddhas, to destroy Icons and the worship of images. The great Syrian archaeologist who was recently murdered was charged with promoting idols in the form of the human images and sculptures at Palmyra. like the prohibition of photographs, this side of Islam will not stand for any human image in public. And as more ancient sites and statues are destroyed, the left will remain silent. As women are turned into slaves, the left will remain silent. Easier to scream about their conservative opponents who will never do these things. Clayton Cramer, on his blog, has been showing pictures of a replica Gardner Gun. The weapon is interesting, both historically and mechanically. For me, the mechanics of the weapon are of interest since the weapon had two barrels and yet the barrels didn't revolve like on a Gatling gun. The two Barrel, shown on Clayton's page works like this animation. There was also a gardner gun mechanism which just did volley fire.
Relative of mine sent out a Facebook telling people not to accept these coins because they don't have In God We Trust printed on them. Its been know for so long that this series has the printing on the edge, which includes the date and mint mark. Yet, this story keeps coming back practically every year.
On August 19th, several news sources reported that George Soros had bought millions of shares of coal stock.
The man who funds the Global Warming/ Climate change groups suddenly buys coal. You can bet its not just because the stocks used to be $90.00 a share and now are $1.00. When Al Gore began telling people to sell their fossil fuel stocks because in five years he would make them worthless I kept waiting for Jim Cramer of CNBC to remark on who would be dumb enough to buy something that was going to be made worthless. In order to sell something you have to have someone willing to buy it. And no one is going to buy stocks that are going to be made worthless by government edit. That is unless the buyer knows something the seller doesn't: Like possibly all the other things we make using coal including Steel where we use Processed Coal (Or Coke) in the blast furnaces. The alternative is that the buyer has depressed the value of the stock by various (legal) means so they can then buy real cheap. Following which they stop the legal measures that depressed the stock value. In the end Soros is at least up front on the purchases; Danny Devito in in the movie "Other Peoples Money" set up a front company in Jamaica called OPM investments. |
James N. GibsonPublished Author, Degreed Engineer and amateur Military Historian. Archives
January 2024
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