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Comments: 224 +- Science: Program To Detect Smuggled Nuclear Bombs Stalls on Monday November 23, @06:11PM
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by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday November 23, @06:11PM
from the i-see-a-business-opportunity-here dept.
from the i-see-a-business-opportunity-here dept.
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Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a program to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers has stalled because the United States has run out of helium 3, a crucial raw material needed to build the 1,300 to 1,400 machines to be deployed in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year. Helium 3 is an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays — but the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989 after accumulating a substantial stockpile of Helium 3 as a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. 'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. Helium 3 is not hazardous or even chemically reactive, and it is not the only material that can be used for neutron detection. The Homeland Security Department has older equipment that can look for radioactivity, but it does not differentiate well between bomb fuel and innocuous materials that naturally emit radiation like cat litter, ceramic tiles and bananas — and sounds false alarms more often. In a letter to President Obama, Miller called the shortage 'a national crisis' and said the price had jumped to $2,000 a liter from $100 in the last few years. With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terrorists will try to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States, Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas."
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There's plenty on the moon! (Score:5, Insightful)
The moon is covered in helium 3. There, we have to have a manned lunar colony in order to be safe from terrorists!
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Do you think you could deliver that in car-analogy form?
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>Do you think you could deliver that in car-analogy form?
F450 vs a Miata.
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ROFLMAO, come on mods, he cant be serious.
No one is THAT stupid surely.
Then again whenever someone writes Barrack "Hussein" Obama you just never know if they are real paranoid right wing nutjobs, or just satirising them.
Words cannot describe how much I enjoy their terrified thrashing around now a decent intelligent black man is President. Fun times.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently it is, if you're in the military and the "things" you are speaking out against are the United States and/or its armed forces. Uniform Code of Military Justice, article 134: "GENERAL ARTICLE: Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall
Foreseeable doesn't mean foreseen (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, this was foreseeable. But at the time nobody needed large quantities of this sort of radiation-detection gear, and nobody foresaw circumstances where we'd suddenly develop a huge demand for it. So when production was stopped, nobody saw the consequences as being any major problem.
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Is that because they hadn't seen The Sum of all fears yet?
Re:Foreseeable doesn't mean foreseen (Score:5, Informative)
Boron-10 lined proportional counters, fission chambers, boron trifluoride, lithium doped glass
To make a slashdot analogy, it's kind of like if all Debian developers caught swine flu and perished. Not a big deal, just move over to Ubuntu or Fedora.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
if all Debian developers caught swine flu and perished. Not a big deal, just move over to Ubuntu
Ummm...
Re:Foreseeable doesn't mean foreseen (Score:5, Informative)
If Debian just went poof, Ubuntu would still exist; it's just that the development cycle would likely take a serious hit. Either that or they'd pull a Linux Mint and completely rewrite everything to be based off of Fedora or something. Anyway to get this back on topic... The real problem with the Helium-3 shortage is Tritium which decays into Helium-3 over time. The government didn't anticipate needing truckloads of Helium-3 to detect nukes entering the country so not enough Tritium was stockpiled specifically to make Helium-3. We get most of the Helium-3 from our Hydrogen bomb stockpile which uses the Deuterium + Tritium fusion reaction. Since we didn't need much Helium-3 or Tritium, we didn't put the Li-6 + n => T + He4 reaction to good use but we can now. We also as the GP noted, have the option of using alternative detectors although their effectiveness may not be as high as Helium-3 based detectors. So in other words, it's an annoyance but not really the doom and gloom that the summary suggests.
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This could slow down other work (Score:2)
...like lung imaging. (Score:5, Informative)
Run 3He through a polarizer and feed it to someone in an MR scanner, and it lights up the airspace inside the lungs like a Christmas tree. Makes it dead easy to see ventilation defects (emphysema, etc.) and functional issues that are very difficult to spot with any other imaging technique. But Homeland Security Theater has jacked the price so high that even by medical-procedure standards it's prohibitively expensive.
We've spent lots of hours designing and building a reclamation system so that we can collect the stuff, one MOUSE lungful at a time, and pump it into cylinders which we'll ship back to the supplier for purification. Yes, the amount a MOUSE breathes in a study is expensive enough to justify reclamation.
We're also working on xenon imaging, which does some things almost as well as 3He, and some things better. It's still hideously expensive, but at least you can get it from the atmosphere, instead of painstakingly milking it from aging thermonukes.
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Re:...like lung imaging. (Score:4, Funny)
1 - If I were to suck on a baloon filled with 3He, what would be the resulting effect on the frequency response of my vocal chords?
2 - Same question as above, but replace "I" and "my" with "Mickey Mouse"
3 - If I were to breathe reclaimed Mickey Mouse 3He, would I gain supernatural powers and large ears?
4 - Have all those years on the steamboat given Mickey Mouse emphysema and does he have long to live?
Inquiring minds must know!
Parent
Re:...like lung imaging. (Score:5, Informative)
If I were to suck on a baloon filled with 3He, what would be the resulting effect on the frequency response of my vocal chords?
Since it's about 25% less dense, it would make your voice go even higher than regular 4He. Especially if, right after you inhaled, we told you how much that lungful cost. (About $7k.)
That's another way xenon is superior. It makes your voice go low, not high, as it's much denser than air -- and it gets you stoned, too.
Parent
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However, the effect on the vocal cords is not chemical, it is physical. Because He is less dense than air, the vocal cords can vibrate faster in it than in air.
Since He3 is less dense than He4, the effect will be slightly increased.
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Alas, when you mix 3He with oxygen, it starts depolarizing, fast. We've got to mix it on the fly, right before it goes into the mouse. It's tricky, but we've gotten the hang of it. (Royal "we" here; I'm just a data plumber.)
0.4 Kevins (Score:5, Funny)
How do you get 0.4 Kevins? Is this some sort of midget? It's dangerously close to 0 Kevins.
My home town nearly went to zero Kevins back in 1978.
It was a particularly cold winter, and we were already down to 3 Kevins (due to their low popularity at the time).
Kevin Thomas had flown out to be with his son's family for a wedding and got stuck in Boston for a whole week due to the weather. 2 Kevins left.
Kevin Lemmer was rushed to the hospital during my shift. I still remember the call from the EMTs as the ambulance was rushing toward us. "It's Lemmer. He's in bad shape. Drove right into the fucking ditch." We called the time of death at 6:15 PM.
At 6:16, all eyes turned to room 2217. Kevin Spencer was 82 and on his death bed with leukemia. His family being Catholic, he had already been given his last rights. If he couldn't hold out until Kevin Thomas returned, we would be at zero Kevins. Sure, we had 4 perfectly healthy Calvins, but they're just not the same.
It was 7:15 when Carla Brooks and her husband James burst through the main entrance. "She's not due for 2 weeks!", James exclaimed. As the staff bustled around getting the Brookses settled, they exchanged darting glances with each other. This was their first child, and they wanted to keep the baby's sex a secret. Of course, in a small town, secrets don't get kept. Nearly all of the hospital staff new that the child about to rip open Mrs. Brooks was indeed a boy.
The delivery was routine, and Kevin Brooks was born healthy, if a tad underweight, at 10:52 PM. Kevin Spencer was pronounced dead at 10:54.
It was, as they say, a close one. Kevin Thomas arrived two days later, the weather having finally cleared up. To this day, we still rib him about it.
Cedar Falls is currently at 5 Kevins.
Parent
Re:0.4 Kevins (Score:5, Funny)
"You have the right to die silently. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you on Judgement Day. You have the right to an attorney, although the judge is already omniscient so it's fairly pointless. If you cannot afford an attorney on Judgment Day don't worry, neither can anyone else. If you understand these rights as they have been read to you then say 'amen'."
Parent
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Re:0.4 Kevins (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Wired covered this one in Aug 2000 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html
Glad we got that covered. (Score:2)
Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas.
It's a good thing that it is impossible to place a container on a non-commercial vessel. It is also good that it is impossible to NOT ship a weapon in a large cargo container.
Re:Glad we got that covered. (Score:4, Interesting)
Will they inspect all trucks entering the US from Canada and Mexico?
Parent
Hmmm... (Score:2)
nuclear reactors to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing there's also a shortage of Tritium which decays into Helium-3 with a half-life of 12 years. If you have enough Tritium around and wait long enough, you'll have fresh Helium-3. You can make more Tritium by exposing Lithium-6 to a high neutron flux like that found in nuclear reactors. The neutron splits the Li6 as LI6 + n => T + He4. Russia might have quite a bit of it laying around owing to the size of their nuclear arsenal that we could buy.
Umm, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's seriously a program aimed at developing and deploying a fleet of nuclear bomb detectors at every port in the United States?
What kind of ridiculous bullshit is this? Did someone at the DHS watch a few episodes of 24 to come up with this? It's movie-plot anti-terrorism at its absolute worst: imaging ridiculously specific scenarios and spending enormous amounts of money to guard against them.
As if a terrorist organization resourceful enough to obtain a *nuclear fucking weapon* would somehow have difficulty bringing it into the country. This is a nation into which several metric tonnes of cocaine and thousands of illegal immigrants are successfully smuggled every year, and someone imagines that they'll be able to erect a perfect wall to keep a few kilograms of metal out of the country?
What congressman's nephew is being paid to make these detectors?
Re:Umm, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. It's not as though US law enforcement aren't being given insufficient tools for the job. Detention without charge, torture, no access to legal council for suspects, abductions of suspects from any country, mass surveillance without oversight, biometric controls at airports... Shouldn't the wholesale abandonment of liberty have bought you a bit of safety?
Phillip.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be far far worse. These things could deployed in enough numbers to satisfy DHS, only to have a bomb still go off in the future.
Two things will happen. The US will be locked up tighter than East Germany. Second, we will find ourselves in vigilant warfare conducted by our own citizens and ex-members of the armed forces. No nation on earth will stop the chaotic violence and bloodshed that will soon follow.
Re:Umm, what? (Score:4, Funny)
Actually it has.. major terrorist plots have been busted and prevented unneeded deaths because of these new tools.
I, for one am glad these tools are at their disposal. Its kept us safe, and that's all I care about. Even the Messiah Obama hasn't rescinded any of them so he knows they are worth the price.
Parent
Re:Umm, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personal speedboat goes out a couple miles. Bomb is loaded onboard. Boat comes back in and is towed to the final destination hitched to an SUV. Just in case, also put a few kilos of cocaine onboard. That way if the police find it they'll take it to the impound yard in a populated area.
Parent
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god dammit, stop posting shit like this, terrorists read slashdot.
Re:Umm, what? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Or just ship it in a commercial container and detonate the thing in the port of Los Angeles, it's not like it's remote.
Re:Umm, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's impossible to load a bomb onto a ship while it is at sea.
And a nuclear bomb is so big it can't fit into a modest-sized sailboat of the kind that people have been known to sail around the world in. There are thousands upon thousands of such boats, and the rate of inspection of cargo is pretty much nil. So unless you're going to stop everyone crusing along your coasts and inspect them, no matter how small the boat, you're going to have to live with the risk that nuclear weapons will be delivered to your shores.
I'm sure the Organs of the State would love to institute a program of random coastal inspection. After all, harrassing innocent sailors is the only way to keep America safe, and the revenue they could generate from seizing yachts would no-doubt keep them in coke and hookers for a long, long time.
Parent
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Because it it totally impossible that a container could be added to a ship already at sea. I mean its not as if ships have cranes or anything.
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Actually, you don't. Know me, I mean.
welcome to science in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems we know how to do just about anything these days, but lack the ability to actually get it done
CANDU reactors (Score:5, Informative)
A byproduct of CANDU [wikipedia.org] reactors is Helium-3.
I'm not the first to note this, evidently [yahoo.com].
It stalled because... (Score:3, Funny)
Why bring a Nuke into the Country? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need to land the bomb to cause lots of damage. Anyone resourceful enough to get hold of a nuclear bomb will probably know about the detection system and the best risk avoidance is to detonate it before unloading. You could detonate it below the waterline (in the ship) or above ground (hoisted off deck by the port crane) to be as destructive as possible. No detection possible unless you scan cargo 20km offshore.
Sorry, I ate some of it. (Score:3, Funny)
Kids, don't trust the food just because the lady with the hairnet says it's OK. Get it checked out by one of the guys in the hazmat suits.
Waste Fraud and Abuse (Score:3, Insightful)
The NYT article says that the current demand for H3 is 65,000 liters per year. WTF!!!
I can't believe that so much H3 is needed for new screening machines. It must be true that the machines are leaking the H3 or contaminating it and thus needing to replenish it all the time.
If it were private industry rather than Homeland Security that wanted the screening function, the regulators would force them to refine the design until they need only one liter or less per machine, and then to protect the asset so that it never leaks or gets contaminated. One liter per ten years per screening machine sounds like a more reasonable quota.
I attribute this crisis to the inability of government to regulate itself.
By the way, I live on my sailboat and cruise internationally. I know that hundreds of thousands of recreational boats enter the USA every year. Every one of them is capable of carrying one or more nuclear warheads. Are these boats screened? No. In many cases they just call a 800 number to report their entry.
Re:Ineffective waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Dogs are better at finding drugs than any scanner is at finding nuclear material.
Less expensive too.
Less training involved, too.
Less maintenance, too.
Cuter, too.
The war on drugs isn't meant to be "won", it is meant to be perpetually exacerbated to ensure the continued employment and empowerment of those waging it.
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Re:Another Crisis? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the consequence of giving anyone the position to make announcements and proclamations. Even without the government, night news would still be on at 6 to tell you that something IN YOUR HOME or AT SCHOOL or ON THE JOB can kill you!!!
Parent
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feck
on at 6 to tell you at 11.
Re:Hey Wicked Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
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