Chronique de la folie ordinaire

Connaissez-vous les FGNW ? La dangereuse pente glissante vers l’utilisation d’armes nucléaires de 4 ième génération où comment le tabou du nucléaire va être levé par les nations dites « civilisées » !  Quel état doit  être on contrôlé par le CTBT pour éviter le développement de ces monstruosités? 

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0510/0510071.pdf

Extraits :

First generation: 6 kg Pu ≈ 10 kt yield at 10% efficiency

Fourth generation: 25 mg DT ≈ 1 ton yield at 50% efficiency

A “change of paradigm” where the concept of very large yield and big nuclear weapons for deterrence use is shifting towards the concept of very high precision and compact nuclear weapons for battle field use— with yields in the 1 to 100 tons range, that is intermediate between conventional and contemporary nuclear weapons.

Indeed, most of the unfissioned plutonium left in the cavity created by an underground nuclear explosion can later be recovered, possibly by terrorists, and reused to manufacture nuclear weapons. This is the problem of “plutonium mines,” which is a major nuclear proliferation concern in countries such as Kazakhstan [10] and Algeria, where numerous plutonium based nuclear explosives were detonated underground.
The physics of the ignition and burn of such DT pellets is vigorously studies in all nuclear weapons states, as well as in a few other technologically advanced countries, most prominently in and in [1, 2].

The world’s two largest ICF facilities are presently under construction in the at Livermore (NIF)7 and in at Bordeau (LMJ). However, the most powerful ICF facility presently in operation is in at Osaka (ILE), with ambitious plans to upgrade it. Another powerful and flexible facility presently under construction is in Germany at Darmstadt (GSI), which has the effect to put Germany in the same “club” as the other most advanced countries in this field, i.e., the United States, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

In order to use these pellets in a FGNW, the remaining problem — which of course is a formidable technical challenge — will be to design a compact trigger, i.e., a non fission primary, to compress and ignite them in a weaponizable configuration. For this purpose, as is indicated at the top and bottom of Fig. 3, some of the most attractive technologies are superlasers, nuclear isomers, and antimatter. Before discussing these technologies, let us recall why such “high energy density” materials and processes are required.

Indeed, many practical problems arise during compression, such as instabilities and preignition, which can only be alleviated if the implosion is very fast, i.e., the implosion velocity very high.

As was explained in the previous sections, the two main issues in exploding a thermonuclear pellet are (i) to implode the pellet to high density as fast as possible, and (ii) to ignite the pellet by heating it at the moment it has reached maximum Compression. If a method could be found to release that energy instantaneously in a gamma ray burst, rather then slowly and at random over time, one would have a new method for controlled high energy storage and release.

Antimatter has the distinctive feature of having a flavor of being a “science fiction technology” while in fact there is no fundamental scientific problem with that technology and its potential applications [24]. The problems are that antimatter is expensive to produce in large quantities at present, and that numerous engineering problems have still to be solved before it can be used in practical applications.

Consequently, the number of antimatterbased research facilities has mushroomed around the world, with the result that some large and primarily national facilities (e.g., in [30] and [31, 22]) are becoming directly competitive with intergovernemental laboratories (such as CERN) which should be the proper place for conducting “pure science” in a strictly international setting.

As a result, by 2010, the world’s two largest antiproton factories will be in Europe, at CERN near Geneva, and GSI near Darmstadt, i.e., only about 1000 km apart from each other.

Creating such a plasma is essentially trying to reproduce in the laboratory what happened at the beginning of the universe, a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang. At that moment there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe, all matter and energy being in a so called “primordial plasma” state. If the cooling down process of the primordial plasma into either matter or antimatter could be controlled, one would possibly have the
most efficient method for producing antimatter on a large scale! There is therefore no surprise that weapons laboratory scientists are in fact much interested by this supposedly purely “astrophysical” state of matter

Possibly the most fascinating aspect of antimatter technology is that it leads to the prospect of “nuclear bullets,” i.e., thermonuclear explosive devices thatwould have the size of an egg and an explosive yield of a few tons high explosive equivalent.

The most likely solution to this problem will probably require that antimatter be stored within a condensed material, in which special sites will function as micro or nanometric sized “traps” where particles of antimatter will be confined in a metastable state sufficiently away from ordinary matter. Triggering the release of that antimatter could produce an explosion by interactions with the condensed material, or could be controlled, and the antimatter moved to another place if it could momentarily behave as a superconducting fluid within the condensed material.

In that case the weapons could be essentially compact solid state devices, i.e., “full like eggs,” and therefore amenable to mass production and scaling provided they would not use any process that is bound to a critical scale or mass. This is clearly possible in theory with techniques such as inertial confinement fusion, antimatter, micro electromechanical engineering, and nanotechnology.

in the case of fourth generation nuclear weapons, a minimal amount of very expensive antimatter or nuclear isomers will be used to trigger the burn of a larger amount of “less costly” thermonuclear fuel such as DT or Li2DT.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0509/0509205.pdf

Historically, nanotechnology is a child of the nuclear weapons labs, a creation of the WMD industrial complex. The most far reaching and fateful impacts of nanotechnology, therefore, may lie — and can already be seen — in the same area.

Second, the use of weapons producing a low level of radioactivity appears to be acceptable, both from a military point of view because such a level does not impair further military action, and from a political standpoint because most political leaders, and shapers of public opinion, did not object to the battlefield use of depleted uranium [3]. These lessons imply a probable military perception of the need for new conventional or nuclear warheads, and

a probable political acceptance of such warheads if they do not produce large amounts of residual radioactivity.

In fact, it is under the names of ‘micromechanical engineering’ and ‘microelectromechanical systems’ (MEMS) that the field of nanotechnology was born a few decades ago — in nuclear weapons laboratories.

Consequently, nuclear weapons laboratories such as the Sandia National Laboratory in the are leading theworld in translating the most advanced concepts of MEMS engineering into practice.

A second historical impetus for MEMS and nanotechnology, one which is also over thirty years old, is the still ongoing drive towards miniaturization of nuclear weapons and the related quest for very low yield nuclear explosives which could also be used as a source of nuclear energy in the form of controlled micro explosions.

In this line of research, it was soon discovered that it is easier to design a micro fusion than a micro fission explosive (which has the further advantage of producing much less radioactive fallout than a micro fission device of the same yield).

The development of this field of applications is expected to replicate that of the microelectronic industry, which was also originally driven by military needs, and which provides the reference for forecasting a nano industrial boom and a financial bonanza.

Considering that nanotechnology is already an integral part of the development of modern weapons, it is important to realize that its immediate potential to improve existing weapons (either conventional or nuclear), and its short term potential to create new weapons (either conventional or nuclear), are more than sufficient to require the immediate attention of diplomats and arms controllers.

On comprend mieux tout l'intérêt des récentes découvertes de Sandia!

Il existe un armement intellectuel préliminaire à la maturation de la conscience. Outil indispensable afin d’éviter une catastrophe globale qui retirerait à chaque portion de vie sa part d’infinie. La désolation l’emporterait et la terre serait transformée en un monde avorté qui n’aurait pu produire sa part d’éternité. Un cluster en moins pour le plérome et la galaxie! Le précipice est à la croisée des chemins, réfléchissons si nous voulons marcher d’un pas assuré sur cette corniche de l’humanité sinon….Quand je verrais l’onde approchée, je crierais ma souffrance à travers mon âme pour conjurer à jamais cette absurdité, mon corps ayant déjà été désintégré.