uranium enrichment

From Soft to Firm: New Cybersecurity Challenges Targeting Firmware

I was doing research not too long ago to talk about the Stuxnet worm as I find it an incredible piece of technology and wanted to pitch my two cents at it (I was writing the now defunct “Sucks to Stux” piece, but don’t cry for me Argentina! This is piece is better, that’s The NuclearFarmboy Guarantee ®.) when I came across a nifty little group called “Equation”. So I thought to myself, “ooh another hacker group! Let’s check it out!” Boy, did I jump down the rabbit hole.

First things first, let’s talk a little about Stuxnet. If you’re thinking that it is the system responsible for this:

Running Windows 1984
(Photo Credit: Wikipedia and Orion Pictures)

Then you are wrong. You are thinking of Skynet, not Stuxnet (as much as we all would love to listen to some 1980s synth music while being chased by a half-naked Austrian robot).

What is Stuxnet and what did it do? Well, I’m not here to point out any fingers to world governments or policies to curb/sabotage a third government’s nuclear program (even with thinly veiled references). That’s just not me. I’m a nerd, I love talking about code, science, and baseball so let’s talk about how Stuxnet does what it does and how it did what it did regardless of who made it. Stuxnet was a computer worm meant for cyber-sabotage (cue the Beastie Boys) by targeting programmable logic controllers, or PLCs.

What is a PLC? Well imagine your computer wants do do something in the real world (because yay automation!) and it wants to open doors, control factory processes, assembly lines, or…uranium enrichment centrifuges. These PLCs are essentially mechanisms that translate the code (011010000110100100100001) to physical movements. Just like a keyboard logs a physical action onto a digital code, these PLCs translate the commands from the CPU to do an action (such as speeding up or slowing down your centrifuges). Isn’t the future neat?

Continue reading “From Soft to Firm: New Cybersecurity Challenges Targeting Firmware” →

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Important Uranium Isotopes For Dummies!

Yesterday I was at work and a coworker @mariannefisher asked me where she could find a chart that had the information of important uranium isotopes. So being the nerd I am I made a chart that contained the important information of the major isotopes. The chart is attached, and a high res version can be found here:

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@nuclearfarmboy

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Minor Uranium Isotopes in Enrichment Tails

Originally for my project this summer I wanted to try to model the IR-40 pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) to test if the thermohydraulics of the reactor were still sound even at an enrichment level different from the natural uranium design. Ultimately my project was changed and now I am going to be researching minor uranium isotopes. These are a few brief comments on what I hope to learn and accomplish from this research project.

Uranium enrichment today is done one of two major ways, gaseous diffusion and centrifugation. These two processes take uranium in the gaseous uranium-hexaflouride form (UF6) and use the (slight) mass difference between uranium 235 (U-235) and uranium 238 (U-238) to separate the isotopes and enrich the percentage of U-235 per unit mass of total uranium metal. The significance of this information is that in nature another isotope exists: U-234. This isotope due to being significantly smaller than the U-238 atoms, tends to “stick” with the U-235 during enrichment. In reprocessed uranium fuel several different isotopes are created through irradiation and decay. These include U-232, U-233, and U-236 in addition to the U-234 already present in the system. While these isotopes increase the complexity of the system when it comes to separation for enrichment, they have potential nuclear forensic applications.

In binary systems and models we would only deal with separating U-235 and U-238, unfortunately this is an oversimplified model given the previously stated information. In order to more accurately and realistically model the enrichment of natural or reprocessed uranium a model must be used that takes into account the multiple species that are present in the system. Using this information I aim to answer if it is possible to use the minor isotopes to determine the enrichment capabilities of a state and can it be attributed to a state in the case of smuggled material all by the concentrations of the minor isotopes in either the product stream or the tails. In order to do so I am researching mathematical models of isotope enrichment per stage in a cascade and computing the separation factors of each species and unit.

Ultimately I aim to assess the feasibility of using these minor isotopes as a “forensic fingerprint” by identifying the separation processes and the effects the different feeds can have in the minor isotope concentrations at different parts of the enrichment cycle.

-Cervando Banuelos is currently a Nuclear Safeguards Intern at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Graduate Research Assistant at the Monterey Institute of International Studies where he is currently pursuing a master’s of arts in nonproliferation and terrorism studies, and holds a bachelor’s of science degree in nuclear engineering, with a minor in radiological health engineering, from Texas A&M University. His interests include passive cooling systems in boiling water reactors, nuclear forensics, arms control treaties, treaty verification, and steaks wrapped in bacon. He hopes to some day work for the United Nations, a national laboratory, or the CTBTO.