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Comment by xxpor | Hacker News Reader

I think the focus on nuclear power in the article is naive at best. Bechtel helps run the national labs, which work on (among other things) nuclear weapons and anti-proliferation. I would think it's more likely this would be for anti-proliferation work. Have a CIA asset walk near a suspected nuclear facility with this in their pocket while looking like a civilian. Collect radiation data, and if they get arrested or something, it's just an ipod.

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Isn't that exactly what the article says?

That was my understanding too. What other "nuclear energy" related use would there be for a hidden Geiger counter?

Nuclear power != Nuclear weapons, or preventing the spread of them.

Nuclear power is a prerequisite to nuclear weapons though.

/edit: if you don’t want your country to be an international pariah

The first atomic bombs were dropped a few years before the first nuclear power plant came online.

Yes, but there weren’t pesky inspectors sneaking around with custom iPods then either

I have heard Russia decided to build more dangerous reactor types like the one in Chernobyl because they are cheaper + they could use the same radioactive material for nuclear weapons.

The radiation detector is either a naive hypothesis, or a false flag. If you want to pretend that your audio player is completely normal, you don't connect any abnormal devices to it. Moreover, any facility in the world that prohibits visitors to have electronics on them prohibits ALL electronics. No one would make an exception for “just an ipod”. Neither would secret services that have been dealing with bugs for decades be fooled by “just an ipod”. If there was additional hardware inside, my guess that it was for unattended covert short range data transfer. Maybe they have even used the famous rock™ interface: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16614209

But audio recording would be most straightforward function, as it is built in. Switch (or simply re-flash) the player that belongs to journalist or politician when they leave it, then recover the data periodically. That would mean they knew who their target was.

By the way, which model did Steve Jobs use? It might be possible that these “secret agents” were not secret agents at all. I suspect that any official business starts and ends with you signing papers that prevent you from, say, talking to newspapers about it because you feel like it, and existence of one-time high-profile project like that is something any sane agency would really like to keep secret. “No paper trail” is actually the most non-ordinary part of all of this, secrecy agreements are a common thing. Oral order to work with two random guys (because they have ominous business cards?), and tell them every corporate secret they need to know? Seems suspicious.

Or swap it with one an unwitting asset carries around at work.

Given that it was DoE it is more likely to be an inspector on an IAEA mission that would carry this.

Why would an inspector need to bother with a hidden detector though?

Because their overt inspection activities are in most cases tightly circumscribed.

I can’t quite figure out how a Geiger counter would make sense.

Typical Geiger tubes (and high voltage generator) would be too big to fit in an iPod.

But why would they need such tight integration with the iPod itself? The data isn’t big (each reading would only be an 8 or 16bit int) and could easily be stored on some small flash by something like an PIC12/MSP430.

So you’d only need some simple trigger, which might be a hidden menu item which flips a GPIO to take a reading. Or even just tap the audio output and trigger on a specific frequency being played.

Audio recordings might make sense. I don’t think the iPod video had a built in mic, so one would need to be added. That doesn’t ring totally true to me either though...

The whole thing seems quite weird. I can’t really see any good reason for such tight integration with the iPod.

Have you heard of a scintillator? They are much more efficient than a GM tube and can be constructed from various materials. You can construct them out of silicon, but the energy resolution is poor and does not allow for isotope identification. Using a NaI(Ti) crystal would have allowed them to both measure absorbed dose as well as identify the types of radioactive materials present. As there are commercial products today which are the size of an iPod and detect radiation, I see this as a feasible product.

You would want the tight integration if you wanted to steganographically store the recorded information for covert exfiltration. The agencies driving this have a high level of paranoia and may have deemed this necessary for a variety of reasons.

There are other detectors you could use. You can use a simple photodiode too. But generally they don’t have the same sensitivity. Generally the sensitivity is too low for most radiation monitoring applications as I understand it.

Steganographic storage would make sense, but the article mentions storing on a separate partition.

So the tight integration still seems odd to me. Another comment suggested that they wanted to gain general “iPod” modification skills for other projects. That seems like an interesting idea.

As an aside... I kind of like the idea of playing specific songs, or a sequence of songs to trigger a secondary processor (which is sampling frequencies played). This could potentially take over the USB port if necessary.

That generation of iPods used hard drives, it was possible to replace those with smaller flash drives. This would give you a lot of space to add sensors/secondary compute. And could be done without coordinating with Apple.

It does seem weird that they took the chance of this leaking too... and I would have thought they would have taken any other route possible.

This is DoE I think, not any other 3 letter agency, so they're probably not too worried about it getting out after the fact. Who the hell uses an iPod anymore? Now you'd just use the CCD camera on any modern smartphone, or count DRAM bit errors or something. Then again, they could have done that with the iPod and didn't, which suggests they wanted to measure energy levels maybe. Tight integration makes a lot of sense if you want something that, when opened up and compared to an off the shelf iPod, doesn't look any different.

CCD cameras or counting bit errors doesn’t really have great sensitivity for radiation detection. This is why they are generally not used to monitoring projects and people stick with Geiger tubes. This is my understand anyway (having worked on these kinds of projects).

Its funny really because I never took my uncle seriously in the 90's when he said I should develop my own Geiger counter amongst other electronic devices. Of course I didnt realise the significance of the fact he had access to the Prestel system which the Govt and Royal Family used for messaging before email became the standard in days when computer hacking was still legal. He also supplied GCHQ with telecomes equipment. Probably contributes to reasons why he broke out of HMP Parkhurst and tried to escape the country. If you wrote his degree titles out in full, it would take half a page of A4 before he could even start writing a letter.

It makes me wonder what he knew back then, but as I cant visit him, if he is ever let out, or I dont get another attempt on my life, maybe one day we'll meet & he'll spill the beans more openly.

Of course, I can get nodules of raw uranium sticking out the soil eroded by the sea along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, UK. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to make a dirty nuke or even a decent nuke. There is enough information online from reputable sources like the BBC, Youtube showing 50year WW2 US & UK Govt archive footage and interviews in scientific journals who worked on the Manhattan Project and other nuclear projects to piece together the "meta data" in order to make one, including spotting the spurious info which will make you fail if one should attempt to make one.

You may be able to find uranium ore with relative ease, but enrichment is a nation-state level project that is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies.

>but enrichment is a nation-state level project Thats what this man of science said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UpMhUnEeY

>is unlikely to escape the notice of the world's intelligence and energy agencies Thats how Iran and Stuxnet came together.

Some history https://www.miningreview.com/uranium/avoiding-covid-fatigue-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Namibia#Back...

Teflon as mentioned in the Youtube vid at the beginning also demonstrates another way to enrich uranium. Are those the only two? I think not.

According to the Federation of American Scientists:

> Uranium-235, while occuring in natural uranium to the extent of only 0.71percent, is so fissionable with slow neutrons that a self-sustaining fission chain reaction can be made in a reactor constructed from natural uranium and a suitable moderator, such as heavy water or graphite, alone.

https://fas.org/issues/nonproliferation-counterproliferation...

Also, anyone who can build a Farnsworth Fusor could generate neutrons suitable for enrichment. You are overestimating the difficulty of obtaining and producing dangerous quantities of radioactive materials. This is a convenient falsehood as it breeds a level of comfort in the population, but it is certainly not true.

There is a huge gulf between the abundance necessary for criticality and that necessary for prompt criticality. Even rudimentary, low-yield weapons design requires HEU, likely over 50% 235 (and if you have the capability to enrich beyond 20%, the barrier to enriching up towards "weapons grade" is comparatively low.) I won't contradict the FAS's claim that this is within the reach of any _rogue state_, but it's not something you can achieve by bombarding natural ore with your garage-project fusor.

What stops you from using criticality in a breeder setup? Once you can produce enough plutonium, you have yourself most of the ingredients for a basic gun type weapon.

In any case, you have everything you need for a dirty bomb.

Usually "breeder" indicates a reactor with a fully closed fuel cycle that generates more fissile fuel than it consumes. A Pu-239 breeder would need to begin with critical mass of Pu-239 to begin this fuel cycle, in addition to the U-238 feedstock you are wanting to bombard. Kind of puts the cart before the horse. Additionally, the engineering for a liquid sodium or molten salt cooling system (water is too strong a fast-neutron moderator for this application) goes beyond the means of the hobbyist or extremist group.

I don't think this is what you meant, though. Why can't [an independent actor] recover Pu-239 from the core of a uranium reactor? I'll admit I don't know a lot about chemical reprocessing, but the proposition here is using a series of highly corrosive and/or explosive chemicals ([fuming] nitric acid, tributyl phosphate, hydrazine) to extract Pu-239 from very radioactive irradiated fuel rods with unknown actinide concentrations. Chemical reagents for this process (e.g. for PUREX, tributyl phosphate) are controlled and monitored by non-proliferation agencies. Chemical re-processing will not separate the Pu-240 from the Pu-239. Pu-239 is unsuitable for a gun-type weapon, as it is so fissile that it will blow itself apart in a partial detonation ("fizzle") before the slug and target are brought together--this means you need an implosion-type ("Fat man") weapon to effectively use Pu-239 as a fuel. A high concentration of Pu-240 exacerbates this problem. A fizzle in a populated area is still very bad, but not bad in a way that couldn't feasibly be produced by conventional explosives and/or chemical weapons much more easily. In order to produce enough Pu-239 to form a weapons core within years instead of decades or centuries (provided extraction is feasible), the independent actor probably is looking at a >1 MW reactor with the cooling towers and infrastructure that surrounds a project of that scale.

It is really only a viable threat for a terrorist organization if that organization has the clandestine support of a nation state.

EDIT: Or otherwise enough financial support, technical expertise, and freedom of activity to engage in serious construction projects and industrial chemistry. The point is that it's not something you can put together in a basement lab.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX

Last time I heard the guy named Sheldon Cooper tried to buy yello cake Uranium and it didn't turn out well !

So many questions.....

This sounds like an really great story if you feel like sharing; I'm hooked to hear more about this guy, why he's in jail and the attempt on your life...

Apologies if it was really traumatic and I'm being insensative...

One incident, lane 2 of an unlit section of dual carriageway around 22:00 hrs coming out of Cambridge. Travelling in lane 2, closest to the central reservation which had armco barriers. No cars in front, passed some cars few seconds before hand, saw a bloke crouched down between the two armco barriers and he released a Muntjac deer in front of car in order to cause collision. Cars I had passed earlier, two of them had slowed down in both lanes slowing up traffic behind them. On the surface, if I wasnt vigilant, I'd never have seen the bloke crouched down in the central reservation, but my headlights spreading out to the side gave me a momentary glimpse. Had an accident ensued it would have been passed off and reported as just a wild animal collision, in this case a deer. The fact I saw the bloke crouched down though gave the game away, reported to Norfolk constabulary, they were not interested.

> If you wrote his degree titles out in full, it would take half a page of A4 before he could even start writing a letter.

No, his full degree titles do not take up 300 words.

If you want to converse online without sounding completely crazy, focus on reducing the ridiculous hyperbole and stick to short, comprehensive and digestible statements that flow together and form a cohesive argument/statement.

But the comment wasn't intended to be a cohesive argument/statement, it was a personal anecdote with mild exaggeration for the effect of being entertaining. I don't see the commenter as crazy at all; at worst a bit overenthusiastic to share details about their uncle who probably had some sort of security clearance. Why do you have to be so rude?

The username may hold a clue as to why the individuals communications are a bit disjointed.

Perhaps, but it is in no way an excuse to be impolite to them.

Nor was I.... good thing I suppose.

You didnt specify the font size.

people like you, who insist on patronizing at every opportunity given, are what make online conversations, particularly on this site, awful.

In retrospect I regret my phrasing, but I cannot change it now.

Still, I have a point. The comment I was replying to contains lots of disconnected insinuations dropped casually. Including apparently that he has had people try to kill him.

You cannot casually mention these things in a rambling monologue without sounding crazy. And discussions with crazy people on the internet are hardly ever fruitful.

So working on improving how you communicate to ensure people don’t completely dismiss what you say is a valuable exercise.

Please let us know when this novel is complete, it sounds like a fun read!

Out of interest, going by your username, do you consider yourself to be autistic? You write exactly like a relative of mine who definitely has something undiagnosed.

GPT-3 is that you?

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