PART I MAKING YOUR BOMB ================

Making and owning an H-bomb is the kind of challenge real Americans
seek. Who wants to be a passive victim of nuclear war when with a
little effort you can be an active participant? Bomb shelters are for
losers. Who wants to huddle together underground eating canned Spam?
Winners want to push the button themselves. Making your own H-bomb is
a big step in nuclear assertiveness training - it's called Taking
Charge. We're sure you'll enjoy the risks and the heady thrill of
playing nuclear chicken.

1. GETTING THE INGREDIENTS Uranium is the basic ingredient of the
A-bomb. When a uranium atom's nucleus splits apart it releases a
tremendous amount of energy (for its size). And it emits neutrons
which go on to split other nearby uranium nuclei, releasing more
energy, in what is called a 'chain reaction'. (When atoms split matter
is converted into energy according to Einstein's equation E=mc2. What
better way to mark his centennial than with your own atomic fireworks?)
There are two kinds (isotopes) of uranium: the rare U-235, used in
bombs, and the more common, heavier, but useless U-238. Natural
uranium contains less than 1 percent U-235 and in order to be usable in
bombs it has to be 'enriched' to 90 percent U-235 and only 10 percent
U-238. Plutonium-239 can also be used in bombs as a substitute for
U-235. Ten pounds of U-235 (or slightly less plutonium) is all that is
necessary for a bomb. Less than ten pounds won't give you a critical
mass. So purifying or enriching naturally occuring uranium is likely
to be your first big hurdle. It is infinitely easy to steal
ready-to-use enriched uranium or plutonium than to enrich some
yourself. And stealing uranium is not as hard as it sounds. There are
at least three sources of enriched uranium or plutonium. Enriched
uranium is manufactured at a gaseous diffusion plant in Portsmouth
Ohio. From there it is shipped in 10 liter bottles by airplane and
trucks to conversion plants that turn it into uranium oxide or uranium
metal. Each 10 liter bottle contains 7 kilograms of U-235, and there
are 20 bottles to a typical shipment. Conversion facilities exist at
Hematite, Missouri, Apollo, Pennsylvania, and Erwin, Tennessee. The
Kerr-McGee plant at Crescent Oklahoma, where Karen Silkwood worked, was
a conversion plant that 'lost' 40 lbs of plutonium. Enriched uranium
can be stolen from these plants or from fuel-fabricating plants like
those in New Haven, San Diego, or Lynchburg, Virginia. (A former
Kerr-McGee supervisor, James V. Smith, when asked at the Silkwood
trial if there were any security precautions at the plant to prevent
theft, testified that 'There were none of any kind, no guards, no
fences, no nothing.') Plutonium can be obtained from places like United
Nuclear in Pawling, New York, Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin,
Tennessee, General Elecric in Pleasanton, California, Westinghouse in
Cheswick, Pennsylvania, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation
(NUMEC) in Leechburg, Pennsylvania, and plants in Hanford, Washington
and Morris, Illinois. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the
Isrealis were involved in the theft of plutonium from NUMEC. Finally,
you can steal enriched uranium or plutonium while it's en-route from
conversion plants to fuel-fabricating plants. It is usually
transported (by air or truck) in the form of uranium oxide, a brownish
powder resembling instant coffee, or as a metal, coming in small chunks
called 'broken buttons.' Both forms are shipped in small cans stacked
in 5-inch cylinders braced with welded struts in the center of ordinary
55 gallon steel drums. The drums weigh about 100 pounds and are
clearly marked 'Fissible Material' or 'Danger, Plutonium.' A typical
shipment might go from the enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio to the
conversion plant in Hematite Missouri then to Kansas City by truck
where it would be flown to Los Angeles and then trucked down to the
General Atomic plant in San Diego. The plans for the General Atomic
plant are on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's reading room
at 1717 H Street NW Washington. A Xerox machine is provided for the
convenience of the public. If you can't get hold of any enriched
uranium, you'll have to settle for commercial grade (20 percent U-235).
This can be stolen from university reactors of a type called TRIGA
Mark II, where security is even more casual than at commercial plants.
If stealing uranium seems too tacky, you can buy it. Unenriched
uranium is available at any chemical supply house for $23 a pound.
Commercial grade (3 to 20 percent enriched) is available for $40 a
pound from Gulf Atomic. You'll have to enrich it further yourself.
Quite frankly this can be something of a pain in the ass. You'll need
to start with a little more than 50 pounds of commercial-grade uranium
(it's only 20 percent U-235 at best, and you need 10 pounds of U-235
so...). But with a little kitchen table chemistry you'll be able to
convert the solid uranium oxide you've purchased into a liquid form.
Once you've done that you'll be able to separate the U-235 you'll need
from the U-238. First pour a few gallons of concentrated hydrofluoric
acid into your uranium oxide, converting it to uranium tetrafluoride.
(Safety note: Concentrated hydrofluoric acid is so corrosive that it
will eat its way through glass, so store it only in plastic. Used
2-gallon plastic milk containers will do.) Now you have to convert your
uranium tetrafluoride to uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous form of
uranium which is convenient for separating out the isotope U-235 from
U-238. To get the hexafluoride form, bubble fluorine gas into your
container of uranium tetrafluoride. Fluorine is available in
pressurized tanks from chemical-supply firms. Be careful how you use
it though because fluorine is several times more deadly than chlorine,
the classic World War I poison gas. Chemists reccomend that you carry
out this step under a stove hood (the kind used to remove unpleasant
cooking odors). If you've done you're chemistry right you should now
have a generous supply of uranium hexafluoride ready for enriching. In
the old horse-and-buggy days of A-bomb manufacture the enrichment was
carried out by passing the uranium hexaflouride through hundreds of
miles of pipes, tubes, and membranes, until the U-235 was eventually
separated from the U-238. This gaseous-diffusion process, as it was
called, is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Gaseous-diffusion
plants cover hundreds of acres and cost in the neighborhood of
$2-billion each. So forget it. There are easier and cheaper ways to
enrich your uranium. First transform the gas into a liquid by
subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then
make a simple home centrifuge: Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter
full of liquid uranium hexafluoride and attach a six-foot rope to the
bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your
head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow
down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The
U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be
skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required
10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don't put all your enriched
uranium hexafluoride in one bucket! Use at least two or three buckets
and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the
premature build-up of a critical mass.) Now it's time to convert your
enriched uranium back to metal form. This is easily enough
accomplished by spooning several ladlefuls of calcium (available in
tablet form from your drugstore) into each bucket of uranium. The
calcium will react with the uranium hexafloride to produce calcium
fluoride, a colorless salt which can be easily be separated