You may be able to find uranium ore with relative ease, but enrichment is a nation-state level project that is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies.

According to the Federation of American Scientists:

> Uranium-235, while occuring in natural uranium to the extent of only 0.71percent, is so fissionable with slow neutrons that a self-sustaining fission chain reaction can be made in a reactor constructed from natural uranium and a suitable moderator, such as heavy water or graphite, alone.

https://fas.org/issues/nonproliferation-counterproliferation...

Also, anyone who can build a Farnsworth Fusor could generate neutrons suitable for enrichment. You are overestimating the difficulty of obtaining and producing dangerous quantities of radioactive materials. This is a convenient falsehood as it breeds a level of comfort in the population, but it is certainly not true.

There is a huge gulf between the abundance necessary for criticality and that necessary for prompt criticality. Even rudimentary, low-yield weapons design requires HEU, likely over 50% 235 (and if you have the capability to enrich beyond 20%, the barrier to enriching up towards "weapons grade" is comparatively low.) I won't contradict the FAS's claim that this is within the reach of any _rogue state_, but it's not something you can achieve by bombarding natural ore with your garage-project fusor.

What stops you from using criticality in a breeder setup? Once you can produce enough plutonium, you have yourself most of the ingredients for a basic gun type weapon.

In any case, you have everything you need for a dirty bomb.

Usually "breeder" indicates a reactor with a fully closed fuel cycle that generates more fissile fuel than it consumes. A Pu-239 breeder would need to begin with critical mass of Pu-239 to begin this fuel cycle, in addition to the U-238 feedstock you are wanting to bombard. Kind of puts the cart before the horse. Additionally, the engineering for a liquid sodium or molten salt cooling system (water is too strong a fast-neutron moderator for this application) goes beyond the means of the hobbyist or extremist group.

I don't think this is what you meant, though. Why can't [an independent actor] recover Pu-239 from the core of a uranium reactor? I'll admit I don't know a lot about chemical reprocessing, but the proposition here is using a series of highly corrosive and/or explosive chemicals ([fuming] nitric acid, tributyl phosphate, hydrazine) to extract Pu-239 from very radioactive irradiated fuel rods with unknown actinide concentrations. Chemical reagents for this process (e.g. for PUREX, tributyl phosphate) are controlled and monitored by non-proliferation agencies. Chemical re-processing will not separate the Pu-240 from the Pu-239. Pu-239 is unsuitable for a gun-type weapon, as it is so fissile that it will blow itself apart in a partial detonation ("fizzle") before the slug and target are brought together--this means you need an implosion-type ("Fat man") weapon to effectively use Pu-239 as a fuel. A high concentration of Pu-240 exacerbates this problem. A fizzle in a populated area is still very bad, but not bad in a way that couldn't feasibly be produced by conventional explosives and/or chemical weapons much more easily. In order to produce enough Pu-239 to form a weapons core within years instead of decades or centuries (provided extraction is feasible), the independent actor probably is looking at a >1 MW reactor with the cooling towers and infrastructure that surrounds a project of that scale.

It is really only a viable threat for a terrorist organization if that organization has the clandestine support of a nation state.

EDIT: Or otherwise enough financial support, technical expertise, and freedom of activity to engage in serious construction projects and industrial chemistry. The point is that it's not something you can put together in a basement lab.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX

>but enrichment is a nation-state level project Thats what this man of science said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY

>is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies Thats how Iran and Stuxnet came together.

Some history https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Back...

Teflon as mentioned in the Youtube vid at the beginning also demonstrates another way to enrich uranium. Are those the only two? I think not.

So many questions.....

This sounds like an really great story if you feel like sharing; I'm hooked to hear more about this guy, why he's in jail and the attempt on your life...

Apologies if it was really traumatic and I'm being insensative...

One incident, lane 2 of an unlit section of dual carriageway around 22:00 hrs coming out of Cambridge. Travelling in lane 2, closest to the central reservation which had armco barriers. No cars in front, passed some cars few seconds before hand, saw a bloke crouched down between the two armco barriers and he released a Muntjac deer in front of car in order to cause collision. Cars I had passed earlier, two of them had slowed down in both lanes slowing up traffic behind them. On the surface, if I wasnt vigilant, I'd never have seen the bloke crouched down in the central reservation, but my headlights spreading out to the side gave me a momentary glimpse. Had an accident ensued it would have been passed off and reported as just a wild animal collision, in this case a deer. The fact I saw the bloke crouched down though gave the game away, reported to Norfolk constabulary, they were not interested.

Please let us know when this novel is complete, it sounds like a fun read!

Out of interest, going by your username, do you consider yourself to be autistic? You write exactly like a relative of mine who definitely has something undiagnosed.

> If you wrote his degree titles out in full, it would take half a page of A4 before he could even start writing a letter.

No, his full degree titles do not take up 300 words.

If you want to converse online without sounding completely crazy, focus on reducing the ridiculous hyperbole and stick to short, comprehensive and digestible statements that flow together and form a cohesive argument/statement.

But the comment wasn't intended to be a cohesive argument/statement, it was a personal anecdote with mild exaggeration for the effect of being entertaining. I don't see the commenter as crazy at all; at worst a bit overenthusiastic to share details about their uncle who probably had some sort of security clearance. Why do you have to be so rude?

The username may hold a clue as to why the individuals communications are a bit disjointed.

Perhaps, but it is in no way an excuse to be impolite to them.

Nor was I.... good thing I suppose.

people like you, who insist on patronizing at every opportunity given, are what make online conversations, particularly on this site, awful.

In retrospect I regret my phrasing, but I cannot change it now.

Still, I have a point. The comment I was replying to contains lots of disconnected insinuations dropped casually. Including apparently that he has had people try to kill him.

You cannot casually mention these things in a rambling monologue without sounding crazy. And discussions with crazy people on the internet are hardly ever fruitful.

So working on improving how you communicate to ensure people don’t completely dismiss what you say is a valuable exercise.

You didnt specify the font size.

GPT-3 is that you?

Last time I heard the guy named Sheldon Cooper tried to buy yello cake Uranium and it didn't turn out well !