Nuke detecting satellites

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Nuke detecting satellites

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:05:55 PM EDT

Lately everybody is worried about nukes in country but after the following, I really am not worried.
For the Super Bowl in New Orleans a few years ago there was a "hot" vehicle detected, by satellite, coming east down the interstate toward N.O.
Several teams who were on standby were dispatched to intercept this vehicle.
It ended up being an old man who just had radiation treatment at MD Anderson in Houston.
This is fact. My father, who works closely with homeland security, told me about it.
As a side note, they had large diameter PVC pipe installed over the exits to deluge the crowd who would be running out if exposed to a dirty bomb....

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:24:52 PM EDT

[#1]

Well if it's fact, then you won't mind finding a reference for us.

Jim

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:28:06 PM EDT

[#2]

I smell BS. Provide a source, and I'll retract my previous statement.

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:28:46 PM EDT

[#3]

plutonium can be wrapped in paper to make it undetectable

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:31:28 PM EDT

[#4]

My security clearance allows me to know just enough info to be dangerous insofar as what anti-nuke technology Homeland Security is currently using. ...This is BS on so many levels, I wouldn't know where to start explaining.....

Posted: 7/16/2005 5:57:59 PM EDT

[#5]

Even if satelites can detect radiation, it is unlikely they would be able to cover every square mile of the country at one time.

Posted: 7/16/2005 6:57:32 PM EDT

[#6]

The nuke detecting satellites detect missile launchs and the unique flash given off by a nuclear explosion. Anyone who thinks a geo-stationary satallite (22,000 miles) can detect nuclear radiation from a weapon (not detonated of course) really needs to put down the pipe and take off the tin-foil.

That said, we do possess instruments that can detect the exact isotope from the type of radiation it detects.

Posted: 7/16/2005 7:13:19 PM EDT

[#7]

Yeah...right...

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:00:35 PM EDT

[#8]

Yeah, I heard a version of this story from someone whose "close friend" was a rad tech who got detected by a satellite at the superbowl.

Do some research on the average number of particles emitted from various radioactive isotopes per unit time. Then look at the distance a satellite orbits. Then figure out how big that satellite would have to be to detect one particle from said radioactive material. There are ways of detecting this crap, but it's not satellites. Detecting nuclear detonation from satellites is a whole nother ballgame.

ETA:

Even if you detect one particle, you have no directional information about the source. You certainly can't isolate it to a person or a truck or a city or a country.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:04:36 PM EDT

[#9]

Yeap, that stuff is in no way up in space.
Gotta love people that think they know NBC gear.

Kharn

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:09:06 PM EDT

[#10]

boy, that's an old thread

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:11:36 PM EDT

[#11]

Wow...that's a huge load of crap, and you don't need a satellite to figure it out.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:19:04 PM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
Lately everybody is worried about nukes in country but after the following, I really am not worried.
For the Super Bowl in New Orleans a few years ago there was a "hot" vehicle detected, by satellite, coming east down the interstate toward N.O.
Several teams who were on standby were dispatched to intercept this vehicle.
It ended up being an old man who just had radiation treatment at MD Anderson in Houston.
This is fact. My father, who works closely with homeland security, told me about it.
As a side note, they had large diameter PVC pipe installed over the exits to deluge the crowd who would be running out if exposed to a dirty bomb....

Do you know how many people get radiation treatments in the US daily.
Put that into this scenario, and try to figure out how many "hot" vehicles are on the road.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:19:05 PM EDT

[#13]

You are confusing two seperate things. There are the VELA sattelites which detect the gamma ray bursts of nuclear detonations on earth, even if they are underground or underwater. And then there are civilian radiation detectors, which are placed in many unknown locations. I heard somewhere that every fire engine has rad monitors in order to try to detect radiation sources from dirty bombs or even nukes as they drive around. Also, sea ports have radiation detectors that scan every single cargo container coming into the US.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:28:27 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:

My security clearance allows me to know just enough info to be dangerous insofar as what anti-nuke technology Homeland Security is currently using. ...This is BS on so many levels, I wouldn't know where to start explaining.....

+1

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:29:27 PM EDT

[#15]

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:31:00 PM EDT

[#16]

Quoted:
You are confusing two seperate things. There are the VELA sattelites which detect the gamma ray bursts of nuclear detonations on earth, even if they are underground or underwater. And then there are civilian radiation detectors, which are placed in many unknown locations. I heard somewhere that every fire engine has rad monitors in order to try to detect radiation sources from dirty bombs or even nukes as they drive around. Also, sea ports have radiation detectors that scan every single cargo container coming into the US.

You can even get ones you wear that look like a pager.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:36:12 PM EDT

[#17]

I heerd tell they sell a handheld detector at Dick's Sorting Goods that you just hold, look at an object, and press the button to detect nukuler boms.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:41:47 PM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:
Lately everybody is worried about nukes in country but after the following, I really am not worried.
For the Super Bowl in New Orleans a few years ago there was a "hot" vehicle detected, by satellite, coming east down the interstate toward N.O.
Several teams who were on standby were dispatched to intercept this vehicle.
It ended up being an old man who just had radiation treatment at MD Anderson in Houston.
This is fact. My father, who works closely with homeland security, told me about it.
As a side note, they had large diameter PVC pipe installed over the exits to deluge the crowd who would be running out if exposed to a dirty bomb....

I seriously doubt this story. Besides that IF we are talking about nuclear suitcase type nukes they would be shielded in the first place. You are talking about a 300 lb package including the shielding. This is public information not classified. At 300 lbs we are talking about a bomb which could be driven in a car to the detonation point.

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:42:49 PM EDT

[#19]

$160 buys you one for you keychain.

www.securityandsafetysupply.com/department-supplies/detectors-1.html

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:49:24 PM EDT

[#20]

Having been a NBC Specialist myself...

Posted: 8/4/2005 12:51:44 PM EDT

[#21]

I think ... not.

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:04:43 PM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:
$160 buys you one for you keychain.

www.securityandsafetysupply.com/department-supplies/detectors-1.html

Oh, I especially like the short-short.

Oh look!

It's fatal!

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:08:51 PM EDT

[#23]

But but... I saw it in The Peacemaker

Hollywood wouldn't lie to me, would they?!

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:17:23 PM EDT

[#24]

They may have dectected something from a ground based sensor (highly unlikely) but not satellites.

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:18:57 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:
But but... I saw it in The Peacemaker

Hollywood wouldn't lie to me, would they?!

Is it really a lie when they believe they are speaking truth?

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:21:49 PM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
Lately everybody is worried about nukes in country but after the following, I really am not worried.
For the Super Bowl in New Orleans a few years ago there was a "hot" vehicle detected, by satellite, coming east down the interstate toward N.O.
Several teams who were on standby were dispatched to intercept this vehicle.
It ended up being an old man who just had radiation treatment at MD Anderson in Houston.
This is fact. My father, who works closely with homeland security, told me about it.
As a side note, they had large diameter PVC pipe installed over the exits to deluge the crowd who would be running out if exposed to a dirty bomb....

In any given large city, there are thousands of people who "just had radiation treatment". I will bet there were probably several in attendance at the SuperBowl itself who "just had radiation treatment ". and then of course there are the several thousand facilities that have radiation machines, including the ones at the Super Bowl itself.

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:24:35 PM EDT

[#27]

tag for more info

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:26:21 PM EDT

[#28]

Can the radiation from illicit nuclear warheads be seen from space?

Quick answer: If a satellite can pick up a meaningful radiation signal from 500 km over the warhead, then please do not sign me up to be the technician standing 10 meters from the warhead and receiving 2.5 billion times as much radiation.
Longer answer: Plutonium-239 is primarily an alpha-emitter, and a cardboard box would be sufficient to stop all the alpha particles, but plutonium also emits a much smaller number of gamma rays which will go through the box and could be detected. And in fact, gamma ray detectors may be used by weapons inspectors, or the guards at the door of a nuclear weapons facility.

However, the gamma radiation is not very intense. By way of comparison, if you go everywhere carrying a plutonium bomb around in a cardboard box, you're giving yourself a radiation dose in roughly the same ballpark as the cosmic ray dose you would get from flying in an airplane for the same period of time.

So, detecting this level of radiation from space is beyond ludicrous. Suppose you are trying to detect 6.1 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium (the same amount dropped on Nagasaki). This plutonium is putting out about 915,000 gammas per second with energy greater than 1 MeV. You have a satellite orbiting 500 kilometers overhead, carrying a detector which is 3 square meters in area and is 100% efficient. You would expect the detector to see a gamma ray from the plutonium warhead-- one click-- about once every fourteen months. (I'm including here the fact that the satellite is only passing over the warhead for at most 3% of every day.) In order to take your case before the Security Council, you just have to separate out this once-every-fourteen-months click, to a statistically significant degree, from the background noise, which if you have incredibly good background rejection, might be on the order of ten clicks per second.

It's actually worse than that, of course, since we haven't yet considered any shielding of the warhead. At a bare minimum, there will be some self-shielding: that is, since plutonium is itself a heavy metal, the plutonium in the middle of a lump of plutonium is partly shielded by the plutonium on the outside. If the warhead owner is actually interested in avoiding detection, of course, he'll replace that cardboard box with a nice lead-lined safe and hide the plutonium completely.

Richard Mason

http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/ramblings/warheadsFromSpace.html

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:33:02 PM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:
Can the radiation from illicit nuclear warheads be seen from space?

Quick answer: If a satellite can pick up a meaningful radiation signal from 500 km over the warhead, then please do not sign me up to be the technician standing 10 meters from the warhead and receiving 2.5 billion times as much radiation.
Longer answer: Plutonium-239 is primarily an alpha-emitter, and a cardboard box would be sufficient to stop all the alpha particles, but plutonium also emits a much smaller number of gamma rays which will go through the box and could be detected. And in fact, gamma ray detectors may be used by weapons inspectors, or the guards at the door of a nuclear weapons facility.

However, the gamma radiation is not very intense. By way of comparison, if you go everywhere carrying a plutonium bomb around in a cardboard box, you're giving yourself a radiation dose in roughly the same ballpark as the cosmic ray dose you would get from flying in an airplane for the same period of time.

So, detecting this level of radiation from space is beyond ludicrous. Suppose you are trying to detect 6.1 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium (the same amount dropped on Nagasaki). This plutonium is putting out about 915,000 gammas per second with energy greater than 1 MeV. You have a satellite orbiting 500 kilometers overhead, carrying a detector which is 3 square meters in area and is 100% efficient. You would expect the detector to see a gamma ray from the plutonium warhead-- one click-- about once every fourteen months. (I'm including here the fact that the satellite is only passing over the warhead for at most 3% of every day.) In order to take your case before the Security Council, you just have to separate out this once-every-fourteen-months click, to a statistically significant degree, from the background noise, which if you have incredibly good background rejection, might be on the order of ten clicks per second.

It's actually worse than that, of course, since we haven't yet considered any shielding of the warhead. At a bare minimum, there will be some self-shielding: that is, since plutonium is itself a heavy metal, the plutonium in the middle of a lump of plutonium is partly shielded by the plutonium on the outside. If the warhead owner is actually interested in avoiding detection, of course, he'll replace that cardboard box with a nice lead-lined safe and hide the plutonium completely.

Richard Mason

http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/ramblings/warheadsFromSpace.html

Yeah, that's what I was getting at on the previous page.

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:46:53 PM EDT

[#30]

I saw guys handle plutonium on TV.. They just had it in a containment booth with those gloves that stick threw..No shielding what so ever.. It looked like a Grey disc's.. I think the reason it was in the containment booth is the dust.

Posted: 8/4/2005 1:49:05 PM EDT

[#31]

Quoted:
I saw guys handle plutonium on TV.. They just had it in a containment booth with those gloves that stick threw..No shielding what so ever.. It looked like a Grey disc's.. I think the reason it was in the containment booth is the dust.

Yep. Inhalation or ingestion of Plutionium would give you a constant bombardment of Alpha particles and that would be seriously bad ju-ju.

Posted: 8/4/2005 2:29:41 PM EDT

[#32]

If they could detect nuclear weapons from outer space, wouldn't they use the technology to locate N. Koreas weapons, as well as the ones Iran is alleged to have? Or for that matter, the nukes they suspected Iraq of having?

Bob

Posted: 8/4/2005 2:33:45 PM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:
Quoted:
I saw guys handle plutonium on TV.. They just had it in a containment booth with those gloves that stick threw..No shielding what so ever.. It looked like a Grey disc's.. I think the reason it was in the containment booth is the dust.

Yep. Inhalation or ingestion of Plutionium would give you a constant bombardment of Alpha particles and that would be seriously bad ju-ju.

Exactly.. if I remember correctly...

Alpha radiation is the most harmful, but it's so big it can't pass through anything, so the only way for it to really screw with you in injected or ingested.

Beta radiation is so-so, with slightly higher penetrating abilities, but not as damaging.

Gamma radiation can penetrate through almost anything, but it is so small that it doesn't do much damage at all. Eventually it might pass through some DNA and screw up a single sequence which might later end up into a problem, but generally not because it would need to hit in a small, specific part of the sequence.

Posted: 8/4/2005 5:44:59 PM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:
If they could detect nuclear weapons from outer space, wouldn't they use the technology to locate N. Koreas weapons, as well as the ones Iran is alleged to have? Or for that matter, the nukes they suspected Iraq of having?

Bob

Dont ask questions, accept the story as told, smile and nod in silent agreement.

Kharn

Posted: 8/4/2005 5:49:13 PM EDT

[#35]

Whew what a pile-up.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Nuke detecting satellites

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