Teen Builds Nuclear Bomb Detector 210
DaneM writes "An enterprising teenage boy named Taylor Wilson, 17, has created a homemade, hand-held nuclear bomb detector. It utilizes a small fusion reactor that he made when he was 14, and detects nuclear materials by shooting neutrons at closed containers and exciting any nuclear materials inside — which, in turn, causes more radiation to be produced, and is detected by the device. This may provide a simpler, more effective alternative to searching containers visually, one-at-a-time. No information is given about how safe such a practice is. Taylor also has some choice things to say about how science is, in fact, very cool."
A small fusion reactor (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder how much power it generates.
Re:A small fusion reactor (Score:5, Insightful)
Less than it consumes.
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Maybe someday more -- is the eCat a scam or is it real? We may know soon...
http://pesn.com/2011/06/17/9501849_Defkalion_Announces_Energy_Catalyzer_Press_Conference/ [pesn.com]
"By now, most people following exotic energy breakthroughs have read about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion technology. It utilizes nickel powder, hydrogen gas, an undisclosed catalyst, heat, and pressure to produce large amounts of energy. The technology is capable of producing over 4 kilowatts of thermal power
Fusor, not reactor (Score:5, Informative)
The other issue is that since a nuclear device is a sub-critical mass of fissile material bombarding it with enough neutrons may actually make it supercritical while it is in the beam if the beam balances the neutrons lost. This would let you "detect" the bomb put perhaps not in a very constructive way...although again I would guess that the number of neutrons used for scanning would probably be too small to do this.
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this is still probably a concern for foodstuffs since radioactive material is a lot more dangerous inside the body than outside. Same applies for clothing too probably.
Radioactive clothing is definitely more dangerous inside the body than outside.
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I would guess that it is a Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor ...
Good news everyone!
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Yeah, talk about your buried lead! The kid has fusion going for him, egads! TFA says he did the fusion thing 3 years ago, but is otherwise mute on the details. I'm no nuclear physicist, so I had to google to make certain my own understanding of nuclear fusion was in the ballpark.
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/032399sci-cold-fusion.html [nytimes.com]
Wait until Nature reads about this development at Gizomodo.com; they're gonna be pissed!
Re:A small fusion reactor (Score:5, Informative)
I assure you, the people at Nature already know about the Farnsworthâ"Hirsch fusor.
Re:A small fusion reactor (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fusion reactor is within reach of a hobbyist. It consumes energy but produces fusion. It is not a power generator.
Johnny! Are you running that damned Farmaninmal or whatever Fusion thing again! I'm trying to dry my hair!
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Seriously, people. Click all the way through to his actual article. Gods of Kobol--this is slashdot! Do it for Science!
Not cold fusion. Not Science Fiction. Certainly not as exciting as it sounds.
His fusion reactor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth_fusor [wikipedia.org]
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its still cool that a kid that age has the interest to experiment at that level. Curiosity like this by youth is slowly being killed off, from several sources.
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Next thing you know he'll be busting ghosts.
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When he turns 16, his parents will buy the DeLorean for him.
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I imagine it's a fusor. A fine source of neutrons, but it consumes more power than it generates.
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Get with it people ! (Score:2, Funny)
nobel physics prize is sewed up (Score:2)
Built his own fusion reactor...excellent...and also figured out a way to make sure that the resulting neutron flux doesn't turn his carcass into a smouldering ash heap. Bonus.
Reality check (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone pointed out: building a fusion reactor, while not trivial, is routinely done by tinkerers worldwide: see e.g. this Instructables guide [instructables.com] .
No, the truly amazing thing here is what I found when I clicked through to the original story [pbs.org] (as usual, not linked in the summary):
Allow me to be the first to say, WHAT THE YELLOW RUBBERY FUCK? In every university department I've ever had experience of, researchers and grad students fight tooth and nail to get funding for anything more expensive than an alligator clip. Meanwhile, these guys have sufficient resources to start handing out equipment and lab space to enterprising teenagers for science fair projects! Hmm, time to start looking for a postdoc position there, I think...
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His own lab? Please tell me they didn't let a little kid in the lab unattended. Undergrads are bad enough.
Re:Reality check (Score:4, Informative)
Taylor attends The Davidson Academy. A secondary school for profoundly gifted youth on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. My wife is his chemistry teacher. The Academy and University have a mutually advantageous relationship that allows motivated students like Taylor access to advanced resources not customarily accessible to the typical high school student.
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Do they have a football* team? This might explain why they have the time and resources to support gifted students.
* Yeah, I know. What kind of football?
Re:Reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of funding agencies require a certain amount of your research budget to be spent on "educational outreach." It's likely that someone went "gee, here's a cool way to spend my outreach budget that won't require me to do anything."
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Sometimes there is just stuff that's no longer useful for science, either because it can't be calibrated any more, or uses a technology that is no longer useful. But for someone tinkering, and not concerned about measurable, reliably repeatable outcomes, they can still be useful.
For example I have an old oil based vacuum pump from a lab I used to work. It's no use in today's semiconductor physics, because things have gotten so small that the oil pollutes any experiment, and the vacuum it creates isn't high
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They probably gave him older equipment that was due to be sold as surplus. It's easy to find that sort of thing on eBay or at university auctions for surprisingly low prices.
As long as someone doesn't mind using a device that's a lot bigger and clunkier than the brand-new equivalent (and is off-warranty, and probably past due for calibration), it's a great way to get ahold of things that would normally be out of reach for non-professionals.
The University of Washington has so much unwanted equipment like thi
Not sure if good idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
Cross-section to spall neutrons off of U238 or Th232 are ~1barn with halflife of days, but the most common isotope of iron has a n-2n cross section of around half a barn and the result has a halflife of several years. Any
Love it. (Score:2)
Detecting nuclear bombs by shooting neutrons at it is like detecting dynamite by throwing fire at it right?
Re:Love it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, the bomb's fissile material is subcritical until the point of explosion, when it's compressed by an explosive charge (in crude terms, actually an explosive lens) into supercriticality. While subcritical, no amount of neutron bombardment will trigger it.
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If this becomes a common means of detecting fissile material then nothing will change because building nuclear bombs is way too hard for terrorists to do on their own and isn't worth it when their entire concept is glorified publicity stunts, and most of them are incompetent anyway.
There... fixed that for you.
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C4 can even be used in some camping stoves to heat your dinner.
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Yes, more or less. As actually dynamite is not exploding when thrown into fire. It just burns (not very good btw) off.
Summary AND article misleading (Score:3)
Okay, you might call it a fusion reactor, but it's just a fusor no matter how you look at it. It could most likely be replaced with any other neutron source, since what drives this is the neutron bombardment and the detection of induced radiation, the source of neutrons doesn't matter.
Also, this is in no way revolutionary. What is revolutionary, however, is that the ICE and border guard hasn't managed to implement an automated neutron scanner yet, but a 17-years-old kid managed to. That is why I congratulate him, and hope the government takes notice of him.
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"Okay, you might call it a fusion reactor, but it's just a fusor no matter how you look at it."
How is a fusor *not* a fusion reactor? It is a device that causes nuclear reactions, even if it doesn't reach break-even in terms of energy output.
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Hmm... 17 year old kid playing with Teh Radiations, building fusors, shooting at potential fissile materials with neutron beams? From what I understand of our government, it will definitely, er, take notice of him.
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Re:Summary AND article misleading (Score:5, Informative)
You might have misunderstood me. I didn't mean passive neutron radiation detectors, I meant something like this kid built: an active scanner, that's capable of analyzing the contents of the crate without opening it (that's what the article implies). I go a bit further, the real news is not making this, it's how he crunches the data to get the contents from the reflected neutron flux/induced radiation pattern, whichever he uses.
A passive neutron scanner is all dandy and fine, but can be defeated with shielding. This active scanner, developed far enough for sensitivity/crunching capacity, could detect the presence of shielding (though not its contents), which itself would be grounds for suspicion. The passive scanner would just indicate a zero or very low flux, which might be mistaken for background radiation or other, similarly innocuous, explanation.
Chill the f*ck out, and respond civilly, I did not insult you.
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Hey, if it means you get an advanced detection system for nukes on your border (not that there wouldn't be other ways, circumventing this, for the al Qaeda to smuggle one (or twelve, with one in Jericho)) into the US, it's a win-win situation.
I see no problems.
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Yeah, because poor freedom fighters are going to have the resources the build nukes.
Is there medication you forgot to take?
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Yeah, because the al Qaeda are so poor and undersupplied...
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Pakistan has nukes, Iran will eventually; Iran would probably entertain the notion of reestablishing the Persian Empire.
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What abuot stopping US citizens within the US who hadn't left the country at random road checkpoints to "confirm they are US citizens" and have the drug dogs sniff their cars without reasonable suspicion? Yes, this happens in Texas. No, it's not constitutional.
What a foolish genius (Score:2)
If there is one thing not to mess with as a teen, it's nuclelar tech.
Gizmodo (Score:2)
Another teenage fusor (Score:2)
This could work (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the paper [sciradioactive.com]. He bought or built a "Farnsworth Fusor" to send 2.5 MeV neutrons into a package, and then look for high energy products of neutron induced fission from the package. These would be high enough in energy that the natural background would be quite low, making false positives low. There is no reason why this shouldn't work (although whether its practical is another question.)
He tested it on "20 grams of Natural Uranium Trioxide (UO3) containing - 99.3% U238 and 0.7% U235." (In other words, about 0.1 grams of U235.) The integration time he found he needed was 10 minutes, rather than the 15 seconds desired by DHS, but it's an interesting concept. He doesn't do any calculations as to the expected return from an interesting about of U235 (say, 100 grams), but it would be higher, and so integration times should be less.
He also says that the incident beam is low enough not to be harmful : "the system has low enough does as to not affect the health or functionality of the cargo and operator, However, he doesn't state any dosage information, which I would fault him on if I were grading this paper.
"kid" proves it works Adults get tasked with the d (Score:3)
I can see a group of engineers being told " Okay this kid showed us a plan on how to make this thing you need to figure out how to make it work in the field UNLESS I SHOULD FIRE THE LOT OF YOU AND HIRE THIS KID AND HIS FRIENDS"
maybe the dosage info is not present because he did not have/take the time to get enough data for a legally/medically sound figure??
Re:This could work (Score:5, Insightful)
Praise #2: He's not satisfied with just building the thing, he wants to apply the thing. That's what I find truly commendable.
So he goes off and learns a lot of good science and engineering in how to look for special nuclear material. Dennis Slaughter, of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, was featured on the front page of the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear News magazine [ans.org] in November of 2007 for his "nuclear car wash." Basically the same idea: use a neutron generator (a big one, in this case) and look for signatures of delayed neutrons in response.
So, what Taylor has done isn't revolutionary, but I'm sure it's a lot cheaper than any other neutron active interrogation system out there. Good for him. And, again, awesome job for hunting for useful applications of technology.
Science is cool... (Score:3)
Yes i agree, but its not approved knowledge by our federal government. Please come with us.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Neutron activation analysis (Score:4, Informative)
This process is called neutron activation analysis. [wikipedia.org] It's well known. The practical problems are 1) not putting in so many neutrons that the tested object becomes radioactive, and 2) detecting enough emitted particles in a reasonable length of time. There's an obvious tradeoff there. The second problem is solvable with a large number of detectors, which probably means a portal or tunnel setup, rather than a hand-held device.
Here's a commercial luggage screening machine [rateclab.com] from Russia which includes nuclear material detection by neutron activation, along with regular explosive detection.
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I bet that wasn't built by a high school student.
Some problems why it won't work (Score:2)
Although it generates a neutrons, which pretty much ignore shielding, if it's portable it's not going to generate that much. Also, it's not a neutron detector.
Now here's the fun part, properly manufactured nuclear devices are shielded to such a level you could use it to shield yourself from other radiation sources. They do NOT show up as radiation sources until you detonate them. Any neutron source that would cause the core to become so radioactive it can be detected i
"small fusion reactor" (Score:2)
"PROFOUNDLY Gifted"? (Score:2)
Snark on slashdot is business as usual. Being skeptical of the phrase "fusion reactor" tossed around lightly in the press is nothing to feel bad about. Why the writer wasn't more careful in phrasing the article to begin with is a more revealing question. Calling a fusor a fusion reactor misses the whole point of what a fusion reactor would be should one ever exist.
Why no skepticism here, though, about the description of this purported "Little Man Tate" school:
http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/ [unr.edu]
We're to b
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No, this is proof that anyone can make a fusion reaction. But nobody has yet to make a reactor that produces more power than it consumes.
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Are the neutrons free as in speech, or free as in beer?
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Free as in cats.
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Well, it didn't detect any bombs, but there weren't any, so it has a 100% chance of getting the answer right when there are no bombs around.
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Those scanners are very sensitive too (Score:2)
Our office takes the dental insurance that DHS uses, so we get quite a few Customs and Boarder Protection agents as patients. One told me that when they had the radiation scanners operational, the trash trucks from Canada couldn't get threw for 3 days, they finally had to steam-clean all of the trailers to get the radiation levels low enough to enter the United States. Thallium stress tests causes problems at the boarder too.
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Plutonium is used in fission reactor, not fusion.
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The fission reactor is used to power the fusion one.
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Why don't you just read the article and related links?
Re:Neutron Activation Analysis (Score:4, Informative)
Fusors [wikipedia.org] are a standard neutron source, and they're fairly straightforward to build.
The idea that you could throw hydrogen ions at each other with enough energy to fuse is fairly obvious. It turns out that the obvious ways of doing so are orders of magnitude short of generating net power, but they do generate neutrons.
Re:How very sad (Score:5, Funny)
This boy is clearly a genius with unlimited potential. How extraordinarily sad that he is applying all that potential to something as fucking idiotic as counter-terrorism.
Well, there's not much potential use for a fusor in investment banking, so I guess counter-terrorism is where the money is.
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If we brainstorm a little we might come up with something. It's worth a try...
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Relax. He could be even more useless and study BA or law and become the next manager or lawyer to not even be useless but actually a burden on society.
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I'll gladly admit I had no clue one could do fusion as a science fair project - I thought the journalist had either been taken in, or was reporting in the usual science-journalism-style where everything is exaggerated to its Star Trek equivalent.
That building the fusor was part of the 'news' (which it appears it is not - newsworthy, that is), did give the impression that what had been achieved was something worth writing about; sustainable fusion.
There is a second shite factor here, though. Using this to 'f
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
"Fusion reactor" is dumbed-down terminology for the masses. What he's built is probably a Farnsworthâ"Hirsch Fusor [wikipedia.org] which can be made quite small. It's not useful for generating energy as it's very inefficient, but it's a good neutron source. Also, you're missing the point of how his contraption is supposed to work. The radiation detector isn't the part that uses the fusor. The fusor is used to send a neutron beam through the package under test. If it contains enriched uranium or plutonium, the interaction with neutrons will cause it to emit far higher levels of neutron flux and gamma radiation than most other materials. If you see this effect, you might want to inspect the package. I don't know how effective it is in practice, but the premise of operation makes sense.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
The fusor is used to send a neutron beam through the package under test. If it contains enriched uranium or plutonium, the interaction with neutrons will cause it to emit far higher levels of neutron flux and gamma radiation than most other materials
And if he does that trick on a barely subcritical mass of uranium 235 or plutonium, it goes bang.
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Not likely - the amount of fissile material in a typical nuclear bomb has to be compressed to a fraction of its size by the detonation mechanism in order to achieve criticality. Exposing it to neutron flux won't set it off.
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Yeah thats why I said a barely subcritical mass, not a normal fission bomb. And yes, I know that this is pretty unlikely. Such a mass would be sensitive to other factors such as humidity.
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And baggage handlers.
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Only if it was designed to be a bomb that triggered when you tried to detect it. Otherwise, the uncontrolled chain reaction would go something more like "zort" as it irradiated all the people nearby.
People have accidentally made supercritical masses before. You can't just lump a sufficient amount of plutonium into one spot and magically it's a bomb.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
People have accidentally made supercritical masses before. You can't just lump a sufficient amount of plutonium into one spot and magically it's a bomb.
Nope. It'll seriously mess up your day [wikipedia.org], but a bomb it ain't.
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Oh yeah. Anyone nearby will be seriously upset. For a short while. Pretty different from a bomb, though.
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Fusion is actually trivial to achieve. Thousands of people have built units in their garage.. it's a common science fair project.
Perhaps you're confused because you've heard that an effective fusion power plant is an area of active research and not currently available and have incorrectly assumed that this somehow implies that fusion must be hard.
You're wrong, and I hope you feel like an idiot now for being so smug.
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Fusion is hard. It can be done, but if it was easy it'd be a net power source. ;-)
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Informative)
I assure you, Farnsworthâ"Hirsch fusors exist, fit the dictionary definition of "reactor", are well within the capabilities of teenagers to build, and do emit neutrons.
And I also assure you that when you bombard fissile material with neutrons, its rate of activity goes up, and that increase in activity makes it easier to detect the fissile material with radiation detectors.
Re:No kidding (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, the article did clearly specify this was a different type of detector, which worked by emitting neutrons, exciting nearby fissionable material, and measuring the radiation given off by it after excitation. Still, it's unlikely the boy has has a portable nuclear reactor. Perhaps some of the article is true, and the journalist confused that part.
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Sorry to piss in your boot, but when your have fissile material being irradiated with neutrons, it fissions and radiates gamma. Gamma rays are easy to detect and discriminating between gamma and neutrons is trivial.
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Damn it. Now we're going to have to read about a neutron emitter getting a pot growing warrant or someone using bitcoins to pay for a neutron emitter or something.
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Building a fusion reactor ain't so hard. At least as long as you do not care about power input and output.
What science currently has troubles with is to create a fusion reactor with a net surplus of energy after the fusion. That's the thing that's hard. To harness the energy created by nuclear fusion in such a way that the chain reaction can remain stable (i.e. is at the very least self sustaining) is the holy grail of cold fusion power. Not getting atoms to fuse.
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Again: Fusing atoms isn't rocket science. Getting more energy out of it than you put in is the nontrivial part.
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Do you know the kid? i was doing things like then when i was in high school 30 years ago and i did NOT have it handed to me to 'call it mine'.
Creating what this kid does not require TONS of money, and besides is it a crime if his parents are funding his learning? Learning doesn't come free ya know.
You have no clue what really took place here, so you just look stupid.
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Making something more workable, smaller, and cheaper is also a form of innovation. I bet this system costs a whole lot less than the satellite-based system and we already know its more portable.
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The size of the distortion field depends more on how you define portable, than it does on how you define fusion reactor. There some hefty high voltage power supplies needed, an electrolysis unit to generate D2 gas from you heavy water and of course shielding, so I's guess it's more along the line of in a pickup truck portable rather than in you hip holster portable.
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No, I feel corrected and (now) informed. I also feel surprised that as a physics student I've never heard of such a thing.
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Why would you have a near-critical mass in a nuclear bomb? Isn't the purpose of the standard explosives to shove two globs of roughl half that mass together suddenly? A dirty bomb almost certainly wouldn't be near critical even altogether, as its purpose is to disperse the radioactive material. You really think someone's sticking a slightly less than critical mass of fissile material in a crate somewhere and slapping a FedEx label on it?