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Another Blogger for Nuclear Energy

By Eric McErlain
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Anonymous said…
OT - The local ABC affiliate here in Dallas-Fort Worth has done a two-day investigative report on the possibility of nuclear materials being smuggled in from Mexico, and a terrorist nuclear attack on Dallas.

Their "experts" consisted of people from the National Resources Defense Council, backed by documents from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

One of the claims was that a lightly-shielded (1/16" of lead) block of HEU the size of a soda can, in a tractor-trailer rig, could be smuggled undetected past the RPMs installed at the Mexican border.

Is this true? In the story they seemed to assert that HEU would be as easy to smuggle into the US as depleted uranium.
November 4, 2005 at 11:42 PM
Engineer-Poet said…
HEU has a certain rate of spontaneous fissions.  This releases both neutrons (which are barely scattered by lead) and gamma rays (which are poorly absorbed by anything so thin).

Anyone with knowledge of the sensitivity of gamma spectrometers want to go further?
November 5, 2005 at 2:09 AM
Stewart Peterson said…
HEU is ambiguous, although if you're talking about weapons-grade uranium, it's about six times as radioactive as DU. Weapons-grade HEU does not release many neutrons from spontaneous fissions, but does release detectable amounts of gamma rays.

I would think they could detect it.

Interestingly, a soda-can-sized container of weapons-grade uranium isn't enough to build a bomb.
November 6, 2005 at 3:41 AM
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