Scott Ferrin wrote in
:

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 21:13:10 GMT, "Thomas Schoene"
wrote:

Hobo wrote:
In article ,
"Matt B" wrote:


It's not the nuke attached to an ICBM that I'm worried about. It's
the one delivered to the centre of Sydney in the back of a beat up
old white Toyota Hiace van that concerns me.

Even worse, imagine a bunch of people in a basement working on a gun
device nuke. When ready they set a timer and leave the city. If the
device doesn't work they return to make ready a second attempt and
keep doing so until they succeed.

If a gun device fails, I'd expect to see the bits blown over a fairly
wide area. Any random group of terrorists should be able to manage
the electronics for a gun fission weapon, so it's nearly impossible to
imagine the explosive not firing. After that, you simply have varying
degrees of fizzle.


Why fizzle? No convenient neutron source to kick start it?

If they get the critical mass figured wrong,it could 'fizzle' while they
are assembling it,or after firing the 'gun',the mass is not enough to
sustain fission long enough to explode,but still enough to 'fizzle'.Either
way,they would not be -reusing- the fissile material to begin another
bomb;they would not live long enough,it would be highly radioactive.This
happened in Japan,where reprocessing techs "messed up" and had a
fizzle.IIRC,the techs died.

--
Jim Yanik,NRA member
jyanik-at-kua.net