2009 APS April Meeting
Volume 54, Number 4
Saturday–Tuesday, May 2–5, 2009;
Denver, Colorado
Session P1: Plenary Session II
8:30 AM–10:18 AM,
Monday, May 4, 2009
Room: Plaza Ballroom ABC
Sponsoring
Unit:
APS
Chair: Cherry Murray, APS President and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract ID: BAPS.2009.APR.P1.3
Abstract: P1.00003 : A Physicist Looks at the Terrorist Threat
9:42 AM–10:18 AM
Preview Abstract
Abstract
Author:
Richard Muller
(University of California at Berkeley)
Many people fear a terrorist nuclear device, smuggled into the
United
States, as the one weapon that could surpass the destruction and
impact of
9-11. I'll review the design of nuclear weapons, with emphasis on
the kinds
that can be developed by rogue nations, terrorist groups, and
high-school
students. Saddam, prior to the first gulf war, was developing a
uranium
bomb, similar to the one that destroyed Hiroshima. His calutrons
(named
after my university) were destroyed by the United Nations. The
North Korean
nuclear weapon was, like the U.S. bomb used on Nagasaki, based on
plutonium.
Its test released the energy equivalent of about 400 tons of TNT.
Although
some people have speculated that they were attempting to build a
small bomb,
it is far more likely that this weapon was a fizzle, with less
than 1
percent of the plutonium exploded. In contrast, the energy
released from
burning jet fuel at the 9-11 World Trade Center attack was the
equivalent of
900 tons of TNT for each plane -- over twice that of the North
Korean Nuke.
The damage came from the fact that gasoline delivers 10
kilocalories per
gram, about 15 times the energy of an equal weight of TNT. It is
this huge
energy per gram that also accounts for our addiction to gasoline;
per gram,
high performance lithium-ion computer batteries carry only 1
percent as much
energy. A dirty bomb (radiological weapon) is also unattractive to
terrorists because of the threhold effect: doses less than 100
rem produce
no radiation illness and will leave no dead bodies at the scene.
That may be
why al Qaeda instructed Jose Padilla to abandon his plans for a
dirty bomb
attack in Chicago, and to try a fossil fuel attack (natural gas)
instead. I
will argue that the biggest terrorist threat is the conventional
low-tech
one, such as an airplane attack on a crowded stadium using the
explosive
fuel that they can legally buy at the corner station.
To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2009.APR.P1.3