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Fourth Spy at Los Alamos Knew A-Bomb’s Inner Secrets

JacksinPA

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Fourth Spy at Los Alamos Knew A-Bomb’s Inner Secrets - The New York Times

Historians recently uncovered another Soviet spy in the U.S. atomic bomb program. Fresh disclosures show he worked on the device’s explosive trigger.

Last fall, a pair of historians revealed that yet another Soviet spy, code named Godsend, had infiltrated the Los Alamos laboratory where the world’s first atom bomb was built. But they were unable to discern the secrets he gave Moscow or the nature of his work.

However, the lab recently declassified and released documents detailing the spy’s highly specialized employment and likely atomic thefts, potentially recasting a mundane espionage case as one of history’s most damaging. Last fall, a pair of historians revealed that yet another Soviet spy, code named Godsend, had infiltrated the Los Alamos laboratory where the world’s first atom bomb was built. But they were unable to discern the secrets he gave Moscow or the nature of his work.[paywall]
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It turns out that the spy, whose real name was Oscar Seborer, had an intimate understanding of the bomb’s secret explosive trigger mechanism. In 1949, four years after the Americans tested the bomb, the Soviets detonated a knockoff, abruptly ending Washington’s monopoly on nuclear weapons.
 
The secret behind the development of the plutonium-implosion bomb tested in New Mexico & dropped on Nagasaki is as follows: the spherical plutonium core, subcritical in mass, was surrounded by precisely designed blocks of high explosive designed to be set off at the same time to ensure a symmetrical implosion of the core in order to achieve the critical mass density required for the atomic explosion. The technical problem involved the use of explosive detonators. These are not uniform in composition & can not be expected to explode all at the exactly same time, ruining the effectiveness of the bomb. The solution was electronic vacuum-tube type devices that would be designed to explode all at the same time as electronic pulses from the central control time were received at exactly the same instant. I believe this was the research that this spy was engaged in.
 
Good. Deterrence doesn't work if someone else can't nuke you back.
 
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