From: "Peter Trei" <trei@process.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 22:04:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: russia_1.html
Message-ID: <199710061350.GAA06107@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> From:          Harka <root@DosLinux>
> US Sees No KGB Role in Russia's Nuclear Arms
> 
>    WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States Friday rejected the claim of a
>    Russian scientist that Moscow had secretly developed nuclear "suitcase
>    bombs" under KGB orders in the 1970s specifically for terrorist
>    purposes.
>    
>[...]
>    
>    Testifying before Congress Thursday, Alexei Yablokov, a respected
>    scientist who served on the Russian National Security Council,
>    contradicted statements by Russian officials denying the existence of
>    the weapons and buttressed claims that many of them have gone missing.
>    
>    "I am absolutely sure that they have been made," he told the House
>    Military Research and Development subcommittee.
>    
>    The issue arose when former Russian National Security Adviser Alexandr
>    Lebed alleged that up to 100 portable suitcase-sized bombs were
>    unaccounted for since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
>    
>    According to Lebed, who has agreed to testify before the House
>    committee later this month, the devices have an explosive capacity of
>    one kiloton -- the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT -- can be activated
>    by a single person and could kill as many as 100,000 people.
>    
>    Yablokov said he had spoken to the scientists who worked on the
>    weapons and so was certain of their existence.

[...]

I saw part of this on CSPAN. Yablokov made one point that I felt was 
interesting.

These devices were made during the Cold War period, and it's 
extremely unlikely that any could have been made since
the Soviet Union fell apart. 

The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf
life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from
other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which 
can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have
the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the
old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to 
remove the fission products. 

Thus, a nuke left on the shelf eventually turns into a dud. The time
since the Soviet Union fell (which is the upper limit of the last 
time these particular 'suitcases' could plausibly have been repacked)
is long enough ago that they are now either duds or becoming 
unreliable (I don't know if the degredation results in gradually
decreasing yield, or if one day they simply don't work).

Of course, even contaminated Pu in the hands of a terrorist (or a
State) is a disquieting notion.

Peter Trei
trei@Process.com