re the usual arc cco caltech edu aaron ray clements writes i was under the impression that to obtain fissionable materials i e plutonium or reactor weapons grade uranium one was required to obtain a federal permit to own such materials no you merely have to start working on yellowcake or else devise a system to get it from other sources btw the doe handles reactor fuel and merely leases it to reactors the nrc certifies these reactors the military have their own sources a private citizen has none of these official sources actually why bother looking it up from the material we covered last term in weeks of ge ch nuclear chemistry i could derive what it would take to build a bomb that s freshman level chemistry big deal can you make it work that s phd level physics big difference and as far as the explosive charge i as a chemist could synthesize a variety of explosives from commonly available chemicals in the garage if i felt like the electronics behind the detonator and the shaped charges are a little trickier however but not impossible using a few tricks of the trade and if i really wanted to be nasty i could include a core of hydrogen and deuterium so you admit that there s no law that could stop you physics aside could you make one if you had the funds and time the answer is yes so do we lock you up now because of this surely you can see where the comparison with anti gun laws comes into play here of course the hardest part is getting the fissionable material to start with and living long enough to put a bomb together plutonium has some nasty properties precisely why it s not as readily utilized as you seem to have been lead to believe btw u is far better for home made bombs than trying to use plutonium the laws of physics make the creation of a device without serious manufacturing facilities very low in probability dan sorenson dod z dan exnet iastate edu viking iastate edu isu only censors what i read not what i say don t blame them usenet post to exotic distant machines meet exciting unusual people and flame them
