November 23, 2017 • 47 mins
Nuclear forensics is a lot of things - from UN sponsored inspections to tasks more on the down low. But either way, the job of these men and women is to root out possible nuclear weapon threats. It's a fairly unknown and thankless task, so allow us to shed a little light on this very cool and very necessary line of work.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello Seattle, Hello, Portland's We're coming out to see you
this January. Love. That's right, one of the dates, my friend, January.
We're going to be at the More Theater in Seattle
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(00:22):
live dot com for all ticket details. We can't wait
to see you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
Jerry Rowland and it's us Stuff you should Know, the
(00:45):
Nuclear Investigators. I thought this was really neat. I did too,
and I did. I had a silly title. I thought,
how good is this gonna be? But then you and
our article was good enough, But then you found that
great article from econom Economists. Yeah, man, that was good. Yes, yeah,
our article was written by Robert william and it was great.
(01:06):
But it gets even better. Yeah, like people should I
think this is one of those like take twenty minutes
out of your day and read the new detectives from
the Economist just good like and we'll give you a
good over here. But it just gets knowledge to have,
you know, yeah, because you don't really think about this.
But there is, in my opinion, thankfully, a an international
(01:32):
network of people who are dedicated to preventing people from
getting nukes. Who should who who who shouldn't have it?
Depending on who you are, right, Like, there's a there's
a whole um. I looked up at this question like
like is it the right of any sovereign nation to
(01:54):
have whatever nuclear technology it wants? And I saw, um,
that's actually apparently the like you know those sites like
debate dot org and like debate prep sites or something,
they'll have like a bunch of different brain teasers. Yeah,
something like that. Um. And that seems to be mostly
where it lives. But I found this one guy on
Forbes who argued that is not the case that if
(02:16):
you have not demonstrated a um uh like an allegiance
to liberal democratic principles and freedom uh and that you're
just looking out for your people at your role as
the government. That is to say, like, if you're an
autocratic government, you haven't you don't have enough sovereign cred
(02:38):
two to enjoy the right to new because this is
how this guy was arguing against, like North Korea having
the right to a nuclear program, right, But my thing is,
I think it goes even further than that. I think
that that assumes because he was also saying at the
same time, if you are a friendly nation and you
are liberal democracy, um, you kind of should have the
(03:02):
right to a military nuclear program. But like liberal democracies
can change over time, the nukes are going to remain.
So what was once a friendly nation may not be
thirty or fifty years from now, but they're still going
to have a nuclear stockpile. Or some governments dissolved. Look
at the USSR, they had one of the the world's
(03:27):
largest nuclear arsenals, still do, but then the government just
disintegrated and it turned into the Russian Federation, which has
arguably much looser control over the nuclear stockpile. And we
talked about this, then how easy is it to steal
a nuclear bomb that episode we did. Yeah, I think
after after the Soviet Union dissolved, that was that was
(03:50):
a really scary time and continues we continue to see
the ball out from that as far as the black
market trade on nuclear either weapons or the technology or
the information or the pieces parts the mouth parts right,
as we like to say around here. And luckily, like
(04:12):
you said, there's a field called nuclear forensics. And as
Robert astutely points out, they have sort of a three
track uh challenge on their hands, which is a what
they do is a monitor places and countries, um and organizations. Uh,
so they can basically stop them from developing nuclear arms
(04:36):
if they're not supposed to be people on the on
the no no list. Then they track extremist groups and
smugglers and try to find out where these You know,
there's a lot of we'll get to it later, but
a lot of stuff goes missing, which is super scary. Yeah.
Can I just interject here for a second. In two
thou eleven, the US the United States announced that it
(04:58):
could not account for fifty pounds of weapons usable nuclear
material that it had previously shipped around in the world
and that's just gone. They said it was enough for
dozens of nuclear warheads. And then finally, the third thing
that you will do as a nuclear detective or in
the field of nuclear forensics is if something does happen,
(05:21):
if there is a radiological attack or a nuclear bomb
that goes off or is launched. They are the ones
who will investigate the scene just like you would any
crime scene exactly. Yeah, So that's the those are like
kind of the three things that in a nuclear forensic
detective I guess, if is the best way to put it,
UM would be involved in doing. And there's a lot
(05:44):
of other signs around it and research around it too,
which is why you're you very rarely find somebody who
is a full time at least in the u S
I should say, is a full time nuclear forensics expert.
Most of the time they're doing the sign ants that's
helping the field, right. So, like there's there's a project
(06:05):
that UM Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to identify the the
um elemental signature of the uranium that comes from all
one hundred and fifty uranium minds that have ever existed
on planet Earth. Right, So if you come across the
sample of uranium um, you can you can trace it
(06:29):
back to its point of origin. That's something that you
would do if you were a nuclear forensics expert. When
you're not actually like say investigating a case or UM
carrying out a routine inspection of a non military nuclear state.
That kind of thing. Yeah, they're like football referees kind
of right. And it's pretty cool that these guys even exist, right,
(06:51):
that the idea that there are people out there who
are inspecting states, um and by states of men countries. Obviously,
I'm using it in like the the security kind of way, right, Um,
people out there whose job it is is to say, um,
you are not holding up to international standards. We think
that you are going down the road toward a military
(07:13):
nuclear program that's not allowed. We're going to tell yeah.
And Robert has a neat little way to put We
talked about mutually assured destruction many years ago, I think
in a show and in nations signed the Treaty on
the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons a k A MPT.
(07:34):
Is that confusing a K A MPT. I think that's
like the the acronyms, the abbreviation of the Non Proliferation Treaty.
That's right, I think. But he talks about mutually assured
destruction like this like a movie standoff where and I
always equate this with reservoir dogs, like two people and
(07:55):
a gun or three people aiming a gun at one another. Um,
if you are all three aiming the gun at one another,
then there is a likelihood that no one will fire
because you could all die, and maybe you will just
lower your guns. And that's sort of the idea with
mutually assured destruction if we all have not all, but
if these nations have nuclear weapons, they know that just
(08:16):
exchanging nuke fire. Everyone's seen war games. Uh, you can't win,
so I can't win. The trick comes in when someone
else comes into that room, like in Reservoir Dogs, when
Lawrence Tierney comes in at the very end and they're
already pointing their guns, and then you've got a new
gun on the scene, and that's when everybody dies, right,
(08:37):
or I guess probably an even better analogy is that
with the Non Proliferation Treaty, if somebody came in, if
if say Barber strikes in came into the standoff and
Reservoir Dogs and a complete surprise twist in the director's
cut of the movie and said, everybody, everybody calmed down,
(08:58):
lower your guns. Here's a little her from Yental, right,
and she does her little number, and it just charms
everybody into forgetting their troubles and they put their guns up.
And that's that. That's the aim of the Nuclear Non
Proliferation Treaty. It goes even further than that. Imagine if
Babs as she was walking around doing her number from
(09:18):
yental Um, she was like taking everybody's guns up too,
and then maybe disassembling them quickly with a little jazzy
number going. And um, that was that. So not only
is there the non Proliferation Treaty, it was it was saying, everybody,
calm down. That's mutual is sure destruction. I guess the
Non Proliferation Treaty comes in and says, not only are
(09:40):
you gonna calm down, let's get rid of some of
these nuclear weapons to us disassemble them, right, But when
Lawrence Tyrney or Barber Stress and walk in with a
gun a k A m P T a k A
having another another nuclear player, all of a sudden, that
disrupts the weird balance that is mutually assure destruction. It does,
(10:04):
for sure. But that which is why a lot I
think a hundred and ninety nations ratified the Nuclear nonp
non Proliferation Treaty UM, which says, yes, all of you guys,
with all of your big nukes and everything. Get rid
of some of those. We don't like them being here
on planet Earth. And the problem with that is is
that the the organization that was created to oversee this,
(10:28):
the International Atomic Energy Agency. I think they're basically they
amount to nuclear accountants, right. Their whole jam is that
they are UM. They go in and they say, the
international community says that you can have this UM. You
(10:51):
can have nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes, for the power
generation or for your hospitals or whatever, but you can't
have it. You can't have a military program. And and
there you it's not hard once you have one to
to have the other. Right, once you have a peaceful
program down, it would not be very hard to translate
(11:14):
that into a military program. The i a e A
Is tasked with coming to your country, coming behind your
borders and looking at your your program and making sure
that it's non military. And if everything checks off, they
can turn around and say to the rest of the world,
this country is keeping their promise and all they have
(11:36):
is a peaceful program. Everybody can be friends with this guy.
Or if they find that there is evidence of a
military program, they say, guys, um, you're gonna want to
hear about this. North Korea over here is secretly working
on a nuclear program and we've done our jobs. Now
it's up to the international community to figure out what
(11:56):
to do about it. Right. But here's the thing is,
you know there a U N organization, So these are
the above board. Let me come and knock on your
door and get an invitation to come in and inspect
your stuff. I got all my machines, all my gear.
They can sniff out radiation, and you you allow me
(12:17):
in or you don't allow me in. This isn't the
the clandestine uh FBI and and spy agencies that very
much also do the same thing from satellites and you know,
in all kinds of other ways on the ground. But
the I A e A. It really depends on these
UN mandates and cooperation from the country. So, for instance,
(12:39):
and two thousand two and two thousand seven, North Korea said, um,
kindly leave our country, and they had to do so. Yes,
you know, it's not like they draw a gun then
and say no, we're here to inspect your stuff, don't
you get it, right? But what they do is basically
go tell the people with the guns. Right, So that's
that's like a real red flag to not let the
(13:02):
I a e A access to you look everywhere but
in this room, rights, oh yeah, or to kick them
out like that. That really raises red flags and it
did in that in those instances to right. So, yes,
they are toothless. I mean it is after all a
U N body, but they are backed up by the
collective might of the nuclear military Nations UM, who say, basically,
(13:30):
this is the state the sat is quote of the world.
There's eight countries that have a nuclear program. Most of
them are allies UM, and they are tasked. Those allies
have taken it upon themselves to say, no one else
can have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to have
a nuclear program. You're not supposed to be building nukes.
We say, if you can have a military nuclear program,
(13:52):
and we say no. And every once in a while
a state that is not part of that group comes
up on their own with their own military nuclear program.
And when they do, the other countries have to decide
what to do about it. Yeah, and they you know,
the I a e A does very good work. Uh,
it works to a certain degree. Like in two thousand
(14:14):
three when they said, hey Libya, hey Iran, we have
evidence now that you have a military program going. And
so Libya said, all right, I'm gonna give that up.
Iran at least gave up their suppliers in Pakistan, yeah,
a Q Khan, Yeah, and they do good work. They
want a Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand five. However,
depending on who you ask, um, like the United States
(14:38):
may say you guys are being too nice and too lenient. Uh.
Countries that are getting inspected say, well, I think you're
actually being a little bit too nosy. So it's definitely
the above board approach you in style to getting this
curved right there. Um, there are a lot of other
ways to like look into whether or not somebody has
(14:59):
an military program. We'll take a little break and we'll
talk about those. How about that, So, Chuckers, we were
(15:28):
talking about the above boards way where the UN politely
knocks on your door and does some inspections. And there's
some cool stuff that they have going on, right, Like
they install digital cameras in the facilities and they they're
like set and program to take pictures if there's movement
near likes uh A a piece of equipment that could
(15:53):
turn this peaceful nuclear program into a military program, and
then they're all time stamped and data and ordered sequentially,
so if there's any missing, some software will catch the
fact that a picture has been deleted, and now all
of a sudden, you've got an international incident. Right um.
They also use laser surveying equipment to survey the layout
(16:16):
of the um uh the what do they call the
the centrifuges, the piping of the centrifuge, Because so you
have to have a centrifuge to have a peaceful nuclear program.
Right like you take um uranium and uranium has like
points seven percent uranium in a uranium or I should
(16:38):
say the stuff that you find in nature. Now to
have like to create nuclear fuel for a nuclear power plant,
you've gotta you've got to isolate that the uranium two
thirty five isotope, and you do that by spinning it
in gas in a vacuum so fast that you're hitting
like seventy thousand rpm s and it separates the isotopes.
(17:02):
And then those things are connected. All those all those
centrifuges are connected by tubes of gas so that the
isotopes you want all kind of mingle and migrate to
the place you want them to to where you collect them,
and then all of a sudden, you have three percent
concentration of uranium. Now you have UM nuclear fuel that
you can use for peaceful purposes if you keep it going,
(17:23):
if you make some upgrades to your whole composition UM
and rearrange the pipes a little bit here there, and
you can get that stuff up to UM concentration of
uranium two thirty five. Now you have weapons grade uranium.
Now you can build nuclear warheads with that. What the
i a e A Does with their laser surveys of
these centrifuge gas pipes is they they survey them, digitize
(17:48):
that and then do it again when they come a
year or two years later and see if there's been
any alterations or modifications to that pipe that it would
indicate that they're trying to make that uranium uh even
more enriched. Yeah. So this is this is the i
a e a s good work that they're doing. Uh.
(18:09):
And this is when they, you know, like we said,
go to countries that say come on in. Then there's
a whole other problem that is UM terrorists and drug
cartels and basically the black market, uh nuclear black market
and that's a whole different deal. You can't go knocking
on their door and they're not gonna say come on in.
(18:31):
You probably don't even know where their door is, which
is the whole point. So if you're wondering, like is
how big of an issue is this? How much should
we worry? Uh, just go read a little document called
the i a e. A Illicit Trafficking Database. Um, it's
a little frightening. So what they will do is they'll
it's it's not very long. They have like a two
(18:51):
or three page report, and I think the most recent
one I saw was numbers where they will basically say
how many incidents of unauthorized um acquisition, possession, used, transfer,
or disposal of nuclear or radioactive materials were there? And
there was the good news is it's gone down. There
(19:13):
was some huge spike in two thousand six. When you
look at these charts, I have no idea what happened
in two thousand six, but it's sort of level, and
then two thousand six it just like ramps up. Like
I think there were a hundred and thirty something cases
in two thousand six compared to just over forty and
two thousand fifteen. Yeah, that's a pretty big spike. It's
(19:36):
a big spike. And then like the graphs really really
stand out. So I don't know what's going on then,
but it's still a little scary to see just how
many cases there are where things go missing, or things
are not disposed of, right, or things are are acquired
or sold on the black market. And this is just
the stuff they know about. Yeah, this is these are
(19:58):
just the ones that got caught, right um. And you know,
that whole non proliferation um is a it's a double
edged sword as well as far as the nuclear black
market goes, because yes, you're disassembling nuclear warheads, but then
that means that nuclear grade plutonium or uranium is now
being transported somewhere for storage or something like that. Right,
(20:22):
so it's back in play. I guess. Whereas before you'd
have to steal the whole nuclear warhead, now you just
have a big lump of weapons grade uranium that's being
transported across the Atlantic, you know, So that that represents
a security um, a change in security too. I wonder
if there were a bunch of nuclear warheads that were
disassembled that year, I don't know. I bet someone knows
(20:45):
the answer though, so like you were saying, like there
is the whole black market UM that that represents an
an entirely different UM side to this. And there are
plenty of UM terrorists, organizations and just what you would
call bad actors, which is hilarious, but it's also pretty
sinister if you think about it. Who would just like
(21:06):
to get their hands on this kind of stuff. Some
of the people that they're selling it to our representatives
of countries that want to have their own military program UM,
like North Korea or Iraq, Um, I should say Soda
Hussein erra Iraq, which we're both successful in creating nuclear
programs right under the noses of the international intelligence community. Yeah,
(21:30):
and you know, well we'll get to that a little
bit later. Like how some of the ways that they
can skirt this stuff. But but the good news is
is that it is Uh. You can't just get uranium
at the corner store, right, you can only mind for
it in certain places. You can't. You can't just get
that uranium and throw it into a hand grenade casing
(21:53):
and then you have a little tiny nuclear bomb. Well
that's a dirty bomb at least. Well, yeah, there are
such things as dirty bombs. But it's it's like nuclear warheads. Um.
They they have to be made in very special ways
with very special materials. And it's the good news is
that is that I won't say it's easy, but it is.
(22:14):
It is all pretty trackable to a certain degree. On
like these nuclear forensics teams, they can generally find out
even by examining, uh, examining the uranium, like where it
actually came from or where where did this casing come from?
It can be tracked pretty readily at this point. Yeah,
(22:36):
and that's where the UM like the where the nuclear
forensic scientists are also doing, like the day to day
science to create a database like the signatures of uranium
from the hundred and fifty minds around the around the world. Right,
that's where that stuff kind of comes into place. When
you find something, you know, the dude who's smuggling it,
(22:56):
he may give up whoever he knows, but that doesn't
mean it's going to lead anywhere. UM. Actually studying the
material that he was smuggling is UM, it can frequently
give up more information than that person even knows, you know,
yeah for sure. But to do that you have to
catch the material. UM when it's say coming through your
(23:18):
border or your port and there are um, well, there's
there's a number of ways to do this, right yeah.
I mean you know you can do a lot with
satellite imagery of course, um, but you can only do
so much with satellite imagery, like to really to really
find this stuff. I mean, the good news is radiation
gives off radiation, so are these these uh uranium and
(23:40):
stuff like that gives off radiation, But you need to
be on like ideally you need to be on the
ground and fairly close to it to read it. Yeah,
the detectors have gotten way better. Supposedly they need like, um,
just a fifth of the mass that it used to
take to set off a reading. Um. But yeah, you
still have to be I think that the next generation
(24:02):
will be basically a football field, an American football field
link yards, yeah, hundred yards roughly a hundred meters um.
But that means that you have to have a person
in a hostile nation, you know, walking around with a
detector within a football field of a nuclear facility. That's
(24:23):
that's a lot of um. That's that's that's a that's
a tall order in a lot of cases, right, Um,
there are detectors that are attached to satellites that can
detect um radiation into the atmosphere. Yeah, and apparently they've
gotten a lot better too. But the problem is is
that radiation there's a couple of things with actual radiation UM.
(24:46):
It can be shielded relatively easily with a thick layer
of concrete um or lead um, and the stuff that
does escape can get absorbed into the atmosphere. So I
think the detectors, like satellite detectors, are getting much better
than they were before. And probably the stuff that we
know about here in this article as probably ten years old.
(25:10):
I'm sure we're far more advanced than this article would
would say as far as something like a a radiation
detector attached to a satellite goes like even the two
year old article you think is behind Yeah, I think,
I think so, I think, yeah, yeah, I get what
you're laying down. So so I think that it's probably
(25:32):
much better. But again, UM radiation can be it can
be shielded. One thing that they that nuclear detectives have
figured out though, is that there's a part of a
nuclear reactor, uh, not a part of it, but something
that's created in nuclear reactors um neutrinos that you can't
(25:52):
do anything about. They're going to escape because they pass
so easily through matter that they will actually travel through
solid Earth unfazed by anything that comes in contact with UM.
And they've created this. Do you do you see Cosmos
the reboot with nil deGrasse Tyson? Did you see the
(26:13):
one where he was like in a boat in like
a new trino cave underground. So it's really neat, Like
he was standing up in a boat in this really
dark cave that had like little lights or something kind
of starlight. It was a romantic scene. And what where
he was was, um this cave underground. I think it's
(26:34):
the one in Ohio where it's underground in an old
salt mine and it's filled with water and it's underground
to protect it from cosmic rays that could give off
false readings. But it's meant to pick up new trinos
that are traveling through the Earth from UH nuclear reactors, right.
(26:54):
And the way that does that is since new trinos
interact like almost not at all with matter, which is
why they can pass un affected through solid earth. UM.
When it comes in contact with a certain atom in water,
it gives up the faintest flash of light and if
you have enough water, this is actually a pretty rare
(27:14):
occurrence when it happens. But if you have enough water,
it's going to happen eventually, and you're going to be
able to detect it with underwater photo sensors. Right, So
what they've done is fill this old salt mine with
a huge like supposedly it will take like a million
tons of water to detract to detect neutrinos from a
hundred a thousand kilometers away. Um, But when a hostile
(27:38):
nation or a nation that's not supposed to have a
nuclear program runs an on off cycle of their nuclear
enrichment reactor there enriching their nuclear material, you will be
able to detect that through neutrinos in your underground cave
neutrino detector. Isn't that insane? Yeah? Think about how much
(28:03):
trouble it is, but that it actually works, it's amazing.
I think it's amazing too. And and Neil deGrasse Tyson
is the man. Can we just say that again? Oh? Yeah,
for sure? All right. Should we take it a break here?
All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
bit more about sort of the latest and greatest technology
we have going as well as some other sneaky ways
(28:25):
to hide this kind of activity right after this, all right,
(28:50):
so I can't stress enough. That's uh. This great Economist
article called the New Detectives. UH really learned a lot
from it. And there's this UM kind of starts out
by talking about UM and this is if you have
not prevented someone from getting uh nuclear materials and they
(29:10):
are actually doing nuclear tests, which ideally you have stopped
the process before that. But let's be honest, sometimes things
slip through the cracks. People get their hands, or countries
get their hands or rogue nations and terrorists get their
hands on these materials and they want to test out
UM bombs and things. They are now using some amazing
(29:33):
UH equipment, seismic seismographic equipment. Would that be the way
it is? It? Yeah, to detect this stuff to the
point now there's a there's a group called the Preparatory
Commission for the Comprehensive Tests Band Treaty Organization. UH. And
that's a fancy way of saying. They listen around the
world with these seismograph machines to the point where doctor Zerbo,
(29:57):
which is the greatest name ever actually for like a
nuclear international nuclear scientists. Doctor Zerbo says, now it is
impossible to test with thus smallest nuclear weapon anywhere on
Earth in secret. They will hear it. Yep, it's amazing. Yeah.
The the ctbt O, the the Comprehensive Test Band Treaty Organization, Right,
(30:21):
is that correct? Correct? They have so I saw it
listed somewhere, but this this article kind of lays it out.
They have a hundred and seventy seismic stations worldwide, eleven
underwater hydroacoustic centers so you can detect the sound waves
in the ocean, sixty atmospheric infrasound listening stations. They're off
(30:43):
at that point, right, and then nineties six radio new
radio NUCLEIIED NUCLEAD sampling facilities. I think that's the ones
that like like those satellites that can detect radiation leaks.
I think that's that's like that. So yeah, like around
the world, they've got it locked down. You cannot set
off a nuclear weapon in them not know about it.
(31:04):
That is correct. Another big thing that they're doing now
is uh software, network analysis software. After nine eleven, America
really started ramping up. As everyone knows, there listening skills
um and not in like a polite my friend has
some issues they need to talk through way right, you
(31:26):
know what I mean. Uh, So they now have all
the software that can It's sort of I think the
feeling I get is what this software now does. It's
able to just draw from all these different areas, whether
it's email for social media, or phone calls or receipts
and credit card transactions like prism. Yeah, and it will
(31:49):
just it'll feed it all into these the the software
programs now that will eventually narrow it down to, Hey,
this person might be a batty because they have ticked
off uh not as an angered but they have checked
so many boxes in our software system of activities that
they're undertaking that you might want to go take a
(32:11):
look at them. Yeah, and the things that this did.
You say the name Aura, So Aura is a good
example of this kind of software. It's from Carnegie Melon
and basically it it has been adapted to not just
track terrorists, but to track nuclear scientists. Now I think
(32:32):
like thirty thousand of them around the world. So if
you're a nuclear scientist and you're in the prime of
your career and you publish an article every eighteen to
thirty six weeks on average, according to the computer, and
all of a sudden you just stop. You're going to
set off a red flag. They're going to wonder why
you stopped publishing at the height of your career, and
(32:53):
they're going to say, you know, it's entirely possible that
they got drafted into a nuclear military program where would
not be allowed to publish, so that might set off
a red flag. And then there's another computer, um I
think the Pentagon is set up called Constellation the Whopper,
which again is probably yeah, it's probably twenty years out
of date by now if it's in this article. But
(33:14):
this Constellation is a computer that takes the information from
all these other computer all these other softwares and put
them together and says, oh, well, not only did that
guy stop publishing at the height of his nuclear science career,
he also just moved within commuting distance of a um
a facility that is suspected by Army intelligence of possibly
(33:39):
being holding nuclear centrifuges that that aren't registered anywhere. Yeah,
and there uh, there are other programs. There's one software
program that uses what's called combinatorial mathematics, and what they
do is they analyze data to end up with a
set of criteria called centrality between this and degree, since
(34:00):
Radley centrality being how important someone is in the system.
Between this is their access to other people and the
degree there's a number of people they interact with and
the idea there is what they're looking for. Generally, our
network members that have high between this and low degree,
So those are probably like Osama bin Laden is a
(34:22):
good example. Like towards the end, he has access to
a lot of people, but he's not interacting with a
lot of people. Well, he's like a high up. A
higher up, I think is what It indicates somebody of
importance in the network. Right yeah, and um, that's this
is all extremely g whiz. But then you hear about, oh,
it's actually being applied in real life. Um back and
(34:42):
I think two thousand and ten eleven twelve, at least
five nuclear scientists working on Iran's nuclear program were murdered. Um.
One of them was like picking his child up or
dropping his child off at daycare, like just gunned down
by guys in the street or um carbon or something
like that. And the one thing that they had in
common was that they were all working on Iran's nuclear program. UM.
(35:08):
And they think that the Mossade used intelligence that was
gathered by these this type of software program to figure
out if you kill these people, it will really screw
up the program because they're important figures in this program.
Even though we don't know them. We know their names
and that's it. We don't know anything about them. Just
(35:29):
based on this metadata that that these programs put together,
we can tell you that if if they weren't around
any longer, it would set the whole program back. And
they did. Yeah, and uh, like I'll say in earlier,
the good news is is if you want to build
and again we're not talking about dirty bombs and stuff,
but if you want to build a nuclear warhead, there
are very specialized parts that you have to buy UM
(35:53):
in order to do so. So they have software that
monitors this stuff around the world, and what this article
calls UM they reveal choke points basically that they can monitor,
like the ceramic composites for the centerfuges that you have
to have in order to pull this off. There's only
so many companies that do that in the world. So UM,
(36:17):
I mean, that's the good news. You can't run out
to Walmart and buy the stuff to make this happen. So, uh,
it makes a little bit easier to monitor what's going
on to a certain degree. Um. That's gotta be a
huge help man having that. Oh yeah, especially together with
human intelligence, which apparently is still one of the best
(36:38):
ways to find out about a nuclear program. Um. There
was this one I think Syria was working on their
nuclear program and they had, with the assistance of North Korea,
they had built a facility where they lowered the floor, yes,
so that they could start their military nuclear program in
(36:59):
secret and um, rather than a cooling tower, they connected
to a nearby reservoir with underground pipes. Um. And they
had this whole thing set up. And if you were
looking at it, and you were a military analyst looking
for evidence of a nuclear facility being built, you would
immediately check that building off the list because it was
too low, too close to the ground, like the it
(37:21):
wasn't tall enough to house a nuclear facility. And they
did I'm sure over and over. I'm sure they saw
this building plenty of times. And it wasn't until um,
some human intelligence gave it up that it became clear
that no, actually this is this is a nuclear facility,
so it can you can fool the international even the
(37:44):
nuclear detectives can be fooled, is I guess what I'm saying,
which is kind of surprising. But one of the ways
that you do that is you you figure out how
to build your nuclear program in house. You get detected
when you start to spread out through the black mark
market or to that company that makes the composites needed
for centrifuges. Yeah, like Iran, for example, they used in
(38:07):
the in that same article. They can mind the uranium
themselves in the country, which is a little scary. And
then they can also or they at least had been
working on producing those center few droaters instead with carbon
fiber instead of the special steel that they need to outsource.
So all of a sudden, you're not on that list.
You're doing an in house and it I mean, it
(38:28):
seems like from reading this, like the good news is
are getting more and more specialized equipment that you can
detect stuff from further away, and our capabilities and the
software is getting better and better. But these places are
also finding more and more ways to side step traditional
manufacturing means, which is kind of scary at the same time. Yeah,
(38:48):
apparently Um Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program that he
was working on that he was able to come up
with I was mentioning it earlier, where UM he did
it by basically going retro. He used the process of
UM separating uranium isotopes through electro magnetism rather than centrifuges,
(39:10):
so he didn't need centrifuges. And apparently it's so low
tech and UM so out of use that no analysts
were looking for evidence of that, so they just totally
missed it. But he was still able to come up
with the nuclear program using that old, outdated technology purposefully
from what I understand. Wow. Yeah. And then of course
(39:32):
nuclear North Korea's nuclear program was just a total surprise
to everybody. I mean, people suspected it and we're very
concerned that it was going on, but it wasn't until
Kim Jong n or ill I can't remember which one
it would have been, but back in two thousand and
ten they invited as Stanford professor out and showed it
(39:52):
to him so he could go tell the world shocked
everybody done. Yeah, why in the world did they let
that happen? Yeah, I mean I don't I don't know
how it happened. I think it happened because of that
guy we mentioned earlier, a Q Khan from Pakistan who
was the father of Pakistan's military nuclear program UM, who
was educated in Europe and stole some blueprints for making
(40:16):
nuclear weapons and went about building Pakistan one right. And
then they started turning the countries like Libya, Iran, North
Korea and UM offering basically turn key military nuclear programs
based on Pakistan's designs for like a hundred million dollars.
And then he got He ended up as a scapegoat
(40:37):
for his nation and was placed under house arrest. Luxurious
house arrest, but still from what I understand, the guy
was very upset about this because he went from being
a treated like a god to being treated like, you know,
it's his fault that there's nuclear periliferation among Rugue states
UM and was finally released a few years I think
five years later, And I mean that guy, he deserves
(40:59):
his own episode. He was fascinating. I think still is.
I believe he's still around too. What's his name, a
Q Khan? Can we call it the wrath of con
That's what they did in the Atlantic. They I couldn't
believe it. Uh, so the big question is and the economists,
um thankfully asked that could you build a nuclear weapon
(41:20):
in secret? And uh, there's a couple of opinions there.
They asked the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, former Foreign Secretary
Rhyas Mohammed Khan. He said, Nope, I can't do that
in secret anymore. But uh, there was an anonymous American
State Department counter proliferation official who said it's not impossible,
(41:41):
so you know, don't don't be fooled. Yeah, it's a
little little, little worsome. Yeah, I mean you you really
like to think that nobody could do this anymore. But
apparently it is getting easier and easier. But like you said,
it's also making it easier and easier to detect. It's
like any illegal operations. Um, it's like a game of
(42:03):
cat and mouse with on the development side of developing.
Good guys developing stuff, bad guys developing stuff. Yeah, it's
really interesting. But in this case, this game of cat
and mouse, you have some of the smartest human beings
on the planet who are who have banded together to
say no, no, we're not gonna let this happen. Okay, Well,
(42:26):
if you want to know more about nuclear detectives or
nuclear forensics, start digging because there's plenty out there. And
man is it fascinating. Um, since I said it's fascinating,
it's time for listener mail. So before we do listener mail, buddy,
can we talk a little bit about our old friends
at the Cooperative for Education. Oh yes, let's chuck co Ed. Yeah.
(42:50):
The quick download with co ED is we went to
Guatemala quite a few years ago with them. They invited
to come down you, me and Jerry and I went down.
We saw the great work they do, like real on
the ground hard work helping children of Guatemala pulled themselves
out of poverty through education. Yeah. Yeah, it's in our
two part Guatemala special that everybody can go listen to
(43:11):
if you haven't heard it and get this, Chuck, So,
COED has another drive going on and they're making it
their mission to keep a thousand girls in Guatemala from
dropping out of school. By that's amazing, dude. It takes
twelve years of education to break the cyclopoverty in Guatemala,
but a poor rural Guatemalan has only one and twenty
chance of reaching that milestone. So they are literally identifying
(43:35):
young women to literally keep them in school. Like it's
not some nebulous campaign and you're not sure where your
money is going. You are helping a young woman in
Guatemala stay in school and get educated. Yep. So you
can sponsor one of those girls for seventy dollars a
month or if you want to do half of that,
thirty five dollars a month. COED will match you with
(43:56):
another sponsor to make sure that there is a student
who is able to continue her education and therefore eventually
break her family out of the cycle of poverty that
dropping out of school perpetuates. Yeah, it's really great. They're
awesome people. So if you weren't a good person this
year and you want to make up for it here
before the end of the year, or if you want
(44:16):
to start off in the right way, go to thousand
Girls Initiative dot org and that is all spelled out,
not the number one, thousand thousand Girls Initiative dot org
and you can actually pick out the student you want
to sponsor. Is just the best. Co ED is great
and we're really happy that we're still working with them. Yep.
So keep up the good work co ed and you
(44:39):
guys please please go help these guys out, all right?
Uh now on the listener mail, Yes, I'm gonna call
this UM restaurant health inspection from a manager's perspective. Okay,
do have permission to read this? I love listening to
the show on health inspections. Guys. Want to throw in
a couple of tidbits from my point of view. First,
you were spot on just about everything with your re arch,
(45:00):
including how some employees take no exception to sanitary practice.
Those employees tend to not have a very long career.
When the health inspector shows up and you see the
staff start to scramble in the business, we call that
the two minute drill. And that is not to say
that we don't keep our restaurant up to standards, because
we do, but we want it to be perfect. Typically,
the this made me feel a lot better by the
(45:20):
way reading this. Uh. Typically the hd H comes to
the restaurant at the most inopportune times, right in the
middle of a busy lunch service. At that point, the
kitchen is cooking one dishes at the same time servers
are running drinks and taking orders. Dirty dishes are stacking
up a bit in the back. With the Health Inspection
past fail scale being so specific, the slightest thing can
(45:41):
fail you anything from an ice scoop in the ice
spin to a fruit fly or a steak resting at
temperature that is off by two degrees. We as managers
like to continue to train our staff keep things tidy,
but also I have a few quick fixes in order
to maintain that a rating. Washing hands is a must
anytime food is handled, especially when the inspectors are on site.
(46:03):
As you know, it's a very nerve wracking time while
they're checking every nook and cranny. That is why we
managers are required by law to get health certified to
ensure we are training out staff properly and not allowing
any boots in the Brunswick stew he said, Broad worst
stew so I saw that I think he might be insane.
(46:25):
As always, thanks for an incredible podcast and providing us
with information on things we may not usually have knowledge
to prior all the best, Derek, he said, ps. We
have a remarkable cuisine at my place, so if you
ever are in the area, come on buy and we'll
treat you to some great food. We have the best
Broad worst stew in the region. Well, he didn't say
what restaurant he worked at. Oh, actually it's in his email.
(46:48):
I'm not gonna read that, but they're in Boston, so
maybe okay, and we go back to the wilbur We
can go get some Boston cream pie cake and then
some Broad Worst Delicious. Yeah cool, Thanks a lot. What
is the guy's name, Derek? Thanks a lot, Derek. That
was a great email, and yes, in need, it did
make It made me feel a lot better to Chuck.
If you want to make me and Chuck feel better,
well just send us an email. First. You can tweet
(47:11):
to us. I'm at josh On Clark and s Y
s K podcast, Chuck's Man in the Facebook pages at
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. Is always joined us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(47:31):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how Stuff Works dot com.
Hello Seattle, Hello, Portland's We're coming out to see you
this January. Love. That's right, one of the dates, my friend, January.
We're going to be at the More Theater in Seattle
on January six. We're gonna be a revolution Hall again
in Portland. That's right. Tickets are being snapped up fast everyone,
because you love us out there and we love you
right back. So just go to s y s K
(00:22):
live dot com for all ticket details. We can't wait
to see you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
Jerry Rowland and it's us Stuff you should Know, the
(00:45):
Nuclear Investigators. I thought this was really neat. I did too,
and I did. I had a silly title. I thought,
how good is this gonna be? But then you and
our article was good enough, But then you found that
great article from econom Economists. Yeah, man, that was good. Yes, yeah,
our article was written by Robert william and it was great.
(01:06):
But it gets even better. Yeah, like people should I
think this is one of those like take twenty minutes
out of your day and read the new detectives from
the Economist just good like and we'll give you a
good over here. But it just gets knowledge to have,
you know, yeah, because you don't really think about this.
But there is, in my opinion, thankfully, a an international
(01:32):
network of people who are dedicated to preventing people from
getting nukes. Who should who who who shouldn't have it?
Depending on who you are, right, Like, there's a there's
a whole um. I looked up at this question like
like is it the right of any sovereign nation to
(01:54):
have whatever nuclear technology it wants? And I saw, um,
that's actually apparently the like you know those sites like
debate dot org and like debate prep sites or something,
they'll have like a bunch of different brain teasers. Yeah,
something like that. Um. And that seems to be mostly
where it lives. But I found this one guy on
Forbes who argued that is not the case that if
(02:16):
you have not demonstrated a um uh like an allegiance
to liberal democratic principles and freedom uh and that you're
just looking out for your people at your role as
the government. That is to say, like, if you're an
autocratic government, you haven't you don't have enough sovereign cred
(02:38):
two to enjoy the right to new because this is
how this guy was arguing against, like North Korea having
the right to a nuclear program, right, But my thing is,
I think it goes even further than that. I think
that that assumes because he was also saying at the
same time, if you are a friendly nation and you
are liberal democracy, um, you kind of should have the
(03:02):
right to a military nuclear program. But like liberal democracies
can change over time, the nukes are going to remain.
So what was once a friendly nation may not be
thirty or fifty years from now, but they're still going
to have a nuclear stockpile. Or some governments dissolved. Look
at the USSR, they had one of the the world's
(03:27):
largest nuclear arsenals, still do, but then the government just
disintegrated and it turned into the Russian Federation, which has
arguably much looser control over the nuclear stockpile. And we
talked about this, then how easy is it to steal
a nuclear bomb that episode we did. Yeah, I think
after after the Soviet Union dissolved, that was that was
(03:50):
a really scary time and continues we continue to see
the ball out from that as far as the black
market trade on nuclear either weapons or the technology or
the information or the pieces parts the mouth parts right,
as we like to say around here. And luckily, like
(04:12):
you said, there's a field called nuclear forensics. And as
Robert astutely points out, they have sort of a three
track uh challenge on their hands, which is a what
they do is a monitor places and countries, um and organizations. Uh,
so they can basically stop them from developing nuclear arms
(04:36):
if they're not supposed to be people on the on
the no no list. Then they track extremist groups and
smugglers and try to find out where these You know,
there's a lot of we'll get to it later, but
a lot of stuff goes missing, which is super scary. Yeah.
Can I just interject here for a second. In two
thou eleven, the US the United States announced that it
(04:58):
could not account for fifty pounds of weapons usable nuclear
material that it had previously shipped around in the world
and that's just gone. They said it was enough for
dozens of nuclear warheads. And then finally, the third thing
that you will do as a nuclear detective or in
the field of nuclear forensics is if something does happen,
(05:21):
if there is a radiological attack or a nuclear bomb
that goes off or is launched. They are the ones
who will investigate the scene just like you would any
crime scene exactly. Yeah, So that's the those are like
kind of the three things that in a nuclear forensic
detective I guess, if is the best way to put it,
UM would be involved in doing. And there's a lot
(05:44):
of other signs around it and research around it too,
which is why you're you very rarely find somebody who
is a full time at least in the u S
I should say, is a full time nuclear forensics expert.
Most of the time they're doing the sign ants that's
helping the field, right. So, like there's there's a project
(06:05):
that UM Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to identify the the
um elemental signature of the uranium that comes from all
one hundred and fifty uranium minds that have ever existed
on planet Earth. Right, So if you come across the
sample of uranium um, you can you can trace it
(06:29):
back to its point of origin. That's something that you
would do if you were a nuclear forensics expert. When
you're not actually like say investigating a case or UM
carrying out a routine inspection of a non military nuclear state.
That kind of thing. Yeah, they're like football referees kind
of right. And it's pretty cool that these guys even exist, right,
(06:51):
that the idea that there are people out there who
are inspecting states, um and by states of men countries. Obviously,
I'm using it in like the the security kind of way, right, Um,
people out there whose job it is is to say, um,
you are not holding up to international standards. We think
that you are going down the road toward a military
(07:13):
nuclear program that's not allowed. We're going to tell yeah.
And Robert has a neat little way to put We
talked about mutually assured destruction many years ago, I think
in a show and in nations signed the Treaty on
the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons a k A MPT.
(07:34):
Is that confusing a K A MPT. I think that's
like the the acronyms, the abbreviation of the Non Proliferation Treaty.
That's right, I think. But he talks about mutually assured
destruction like this like a movie standoff where and I
always equate this with reservoir dogs, like two people and
(07:55):
a gun or three people aiming a gun at one another. Um,
if you are all three aiming the gun at one another,
then there is a likelihood that no one will fire
because you could all die, and maybe you will just
lower your guns. And that's sort of the idea with
mutually assured destruction if we all have not all, but
if these nations have nuclear weapons, they know that just
(08:16):
exchanging nuke fire. Everyone's seen war games. Uh, you can't win,
so I can't win. The trick comes in when someone
else comes into that room, like in Reservoir Dogs, when
Lawrence Tierney comes in at the very end and they're
already pointing their guns, and then you've got a new
gun on the scene, and that's when everybody dies, right,
(08:37):
or I guess probably an even better analogy is that
with the Non Proliferation Treaty, if somebody came in, if
if say Barber strikes in came into the standoff and
Reservoir Dogs and a complete surprise twist in the director's
cut of the movie and said, everybody, everybody calmed down,
(08:58):
lower your guns. Here's a little her from Yental, right,
and she does her little number, and it just charms
everybody into forgetting their troubles and they put their guns up.
And that's that. That's the aim of the Nuclear Non
Proliferation Treaty. It goes even further than that. Imagine if
Babs as she was walking around doing her number from
(09:18):
yental Um, she was like taking everybody's guns up too,
and then maybe disassembling them quickly with a little jazzy
number going. And um, that was that. So not only
is there the non Proliferation Treaty, it was it was saying, everybody,
calm down. That's mutual is sure destruction. I guess the
Non Proliferation Treaty comes in and says, not only are
(09:40):
you gonna calm down, let's get rid of some of
these nuclear weapons to us disassemble them, right, But when
Lawrence Tyrney or Barber Stress and walk in with a
gun a k A m P T a k A
having another another nuclear player, all of a sudden, that
disrupts the weird balance that is mutually assure destruction. It does,
(10:04):
for sure. But that which is why a lot I
think a hundred and ninety nations ratified the Nuclear nonp
non Proliferation Treaty UM, which says, yes, all of you guys,
with all of your big nukes and everything. Get rid
of some of those. We don't like them being here
on planet Earth. And the problem with that is is
that the the organization that was created to oversee this,
(10:28):
the International Atomic Energy Agency. I think they're basically they
amount to nuclear accountants, right. Their whole jam is that
they are UM. They go in and they say, the
international community says that you can have this UM. You
(10:51):
can have nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes, for the power
generation or for your hospitals or whatever, but you can't
have it. You can't have a military program. And and
there you it's not hard once you have one to
to have the other. Right, once you have a peaceful
program down, it would not be very hard to translate
(11:14):
that into a military program. The i a e A
Is tasked with coming to your country, coming behind your
borders and looking at your your program and making sure
that it's non military. And if everything checks off, they
can turn around and say to the rest of the world,
this country is keeping their promise and all they have
(11:36):
is a peaceful program. Everybody can be friends with this guy.
Or if they find that there is evidence of a
military program, they say, guys, um, you're gonna want to
hear about this. North Korea over here is secretly working
on a nuclear program and we've done our jobs. Now
it's up to the international community to figure out what
(11:56):
to do about it. Right. But here's the thing is,
you know there a U N organization, So these are
the above board. Let me come and knock on your
door and get an invitation to come in and inspect
your stuff. I got all my machines, all my gear.
They can sniff out radiation, and you you allow me
(12:17):
in or you don't allow me in. This isn't the
the clandestine uh FBI and and spy agencies that very
much also do the same thing from satellites and you know,
in all kinds of other ways on the ground. But
the I A e A. It really depends on these
UN mandates and cooperation from the country. So, for instance,
(12:39):
and two thousand two and two thousand seven, North Korea said, um,
kindly leave our country, and they had to do so. Yes,
you know, it's not like they draw a gun then
and say no, we're here to inspect your stuff, don't
you get it, right? But what they do is basically
go tell the people with the guns. Right, So that's
that's like a real red flag to not let the
(13:02):
I a e A access to you look everywhere but
in this room, rights, oh yeah, or to kick them
out like that. That really raises red flags and it
did in that in those instances to right. So, yes,
they are toothless. I mean it is after all a
U N body, but they are backed up by the
collective might of the nuclear military Nations UM, who say, basically,
(13:30):
this is the state the sat is quote of the world.
There's eight countries that have a nuclear program. Most of
them are allies UM, and they are tasked. Those allies
have taken it upon themselves to say, no one else
can have a nuclear program. You're not supposed to have
a nuclear program. You're not supposed to be building nukes.
We say, if you can have a military nuclear program,
(13:52):
and we say no. And every once in a while
a state that is not part of that group comes
up on their own with their own military nuclear program.
And when they do, the other countries have to decide
what to do about it. Yeah, and they you know,
the I a e A does very good work. Uh,
it works to a certain degree. Like in two thousand
(14:14):
three when they said, hey Libya, hey Iran, we have
evidence now that you have a military program going. And
so Libya said, all right, I'm gonna give that up.
Iran at least gave up their suppliers in Pakistan, yeah,
a Q Khan, Yeah, and they do good work. They
want a Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand five. However,
depending on who you ask, um, like the United States
(14:38):
may say you guys are being too nice and too lenient. Uh.
Countries that are getting inspected say, well, I think you're
actually being a little bit too nosy. So it's definitely
the above board approach you in style to getting this
curved right there. Um, there are a lot of other
ways to like look into whether or not somebody has
(14:59):
an military program. We'll take a little break and we'll
talk about those. How about that, So, Chuckers, we were
(15:28):
talking about the above boards way where the UN politely
knocks on your door and does some inspections. And there's
some cool stuff that they have going on, right, Like
they install digital cameras in the facilities and they they're
like set and program to take pictures if there's movement
near likes uh A a piece of equipment that could
(15:53):
turn this peaceful nuclear program into a military program, and
then they're all time stamped and data and ordered sequentially,
so if there's any missing, some software will catch the
fact that a picture has been deleted, and now all
of a sudden, you've got an international incident. Right um.
They also use laser surveying equipment to survey the layout
(16:16):
of the um uh the what do they call the
the centrifuges, the piping of the centrifuge, Because so you
have to have a centrifuge to have a peaceful nuclear program.
Right like you take um uranium and uranium has like
points seven percent uranium in a uranium or I should
(16:38):
say the stuff that you find in nature. Now to
have like to create nuclear fuel for a nuclear power plant,
you've gotta you've got to isolate that the uranium two
thirty five isotope, and you do that by spinning it
in gas in a vacuum so fast that you're hitting
like seventy thousand rpm s and it separates the isotopes.
(17:02):
And then those things are connected. All those all those
centrifuges are connected by tubes of gas so that the
isotopes you want all kind of mingle and migrate to
the place you want them to to where you collect them,
and then all of a sudden, you have three percent
concentration of uranium. Now you have UM nuclear fuel that
you can use for peaceful purposes if you keep it going,
(17:23):
if you make some upgrades to your whole composition UM
and rearrange the pipes a little bit here there, and
you can get that stuff up to UM concentration of
uranium two thirty five. Now you have weapons grade uranium.
Now you can build nuclear warheads with that. What the
i a e A Does with their laser surveys of
these centrifuge gas pipes is they they survey them, digitize
(17:48):
that and then do it again when they come a
year or two years later and see if there's been
any alterations or modifications to that pipe that it would
indicate that they're trying to make that uranium uh even
more enriched. Yeah. So this is this is the i
a e a s good work that they're doing. Uh.
(18:09):
And this is when they, you know, like we said,
go to countries that say come on in. Then there's
a whole other problem that is UM terrorists and drug
cartels and basically the black market, uh nuclear black market
and that's a whole different deal. You can't go knocking
on their door and they're not gonna say come on in.
(18:31):
You probably don't even know where their door is, which
is the whole point. So if you're wondering, like is
how big of an issue is this? How much should
we worry? Uh, just go read a little document called
the i a e. A Illicit Trafficking Database. Um, it's
a little frightening. So what they will do is they'll
it's it's not very long. They have like a two
(18:51):
or three page report, and I think the most recent
one I saw was numbers where they will basically say
how many incidents of unauthorized um acquisition, possession, used, transfer,
or disposal of nuclear or radioactive materials were there? And
there was the good news is it's gone down. There
(19:13):
was some huge spike in two thousand six. When you
look at these charts, I have no idea what happened
in two thousand six, but it's sort of level, and
then two thousand six it just like ramps up. Like
I think there were a hundred and thirty something cases
in two thousand six compared to just over forty and
two thousand fifteen. Yeah, that's a pretty big spike. It's
(19:36):
a big spike. And then like the graphs really really
stand out. So I don't know what's going on then,
but it's still a little scary to see just how
many cases there are where things go missing, or things
are not disposed of, right, or things are are acquired
or sold on the black market. And this is just
the stuff they know about. Yeah, this is these are
(19:58):
just the ones that got caught, right um. And you know,
that whole non proliferation um is a it's a double
edged sword as well as far as the nuclear black
market goes, because yes, you're disassembling nuclear warheads, but then
that means that nuclear grade plutonium or uranium is now
being transported somewhere for storage or something like that. Right,
(20:22):
so it's back in play. I guess. Whereas before you'd
have to steal the whole nuclear warhead, now you just
have a big lump of weapons grade uranium that's being
transported across the Atlantic, you know, So that that represents
a security um, a change in security too. I wonder
if there were a bunch of nuclear warheads that were
disassembled that year, I don't know. I bet someone knows
(20:45):
the answer though, so like you were saying, like there
is the whole black market UM that that represents an
an entirely different UM side to this. And there are
plenty of UM terrorists, organizations and just what you would
call bad actors, which is hilarious, but it's also pretty
sinister if you think about it. Who would just like
(21:06):
to get their hands on this kind of stuff. Some
of the people that they're selling it to our representatives
of countries that want to have their own military program UM,
like North Korea or Iraq, Um, I should say Soda
Hussein erra Iraq, which we're both successful in creating nuclear
programs right under the noses of the international intelligence community. Yeah,
(21:30):
and you know, well we'll get to that a little
bit later. Like how some of the ways that they
can skirt this stuff. But but the good news is
is that it is Uh. You can't just get uranium
at the corner store, right, you can only mind for
it in certain places. You can't. You can't just get
that uranium and throw it into a hand grenade casing
(21:53):
and then you have a little tiny nuclear bomb. Well
that's a dirty bomb at least. Well, yeah, there are
such things as dirty bombs. But it's it's like nuclear warheads. Um.
They they have to be made in very special ways
with very special materials. And it's the good news is
that is that I won't say it's easy, but it is.
(22:14):
It is all pretty trackable to a certain degree. On
like these nuclear forensics teams, they can generally find out
even by examining, uh, examining the uranium, like where it
actually came from or where where did this casing come from?
It can be tracked pretty readily at this point. Yeah,
(22:36):
and that's where the UM like the where the nuclear
forensic scientists are also doing, like the day to day
science to create a database like the signatures of uranium
from the hundred and fifty minds around the around the world. Right,
that's where that stuff kind of comes into place. When
you find something, you know, the dude who's smuggling it,
(22:56):
he may give up whoever he knows, but that doesn't
mean it's going to lead anywhere. UM. Actually studying the
material that he was smuggling is UM, it can frequently
give up more information than that person even knows, you know,
yeah for sure. But to do that you have to
catch the material. UM when it's say coming through your
(23:18):
border or your port and there are um, well, there's
there's a number of ways to do this, right yeah.
I mean you know you can do a lot with
satellite imagery of course, um, but you can only do
so much with satellite imagery, like to really to really
find this stuff. I mean, the good news is radiation
gives off radiation, so are these these uh uranium and
(23:40):
stuff like that gives off radiation, But you need to
be on like ideally you need to be on the
ground and fairly close to it to read it. Yeah,
the detectors have gotten way better. Supposedly they need like, um,
just a fifth of the mass that it used to
take to set off a reading. Um. But yeah, you
still have to be I think that the next generation
(24:02):
will be basically a football field, an American football field
link yards, yeah, hundred yards roughly a hundred meters um.
But that means that you have to have a person
in a hostile nation, you know, walking around with a
detector within a football field of a nuclear facility. That's
(24:23):
that's a lot of um. That's that's that's a that's
a tall order in a lot of cases, right, Um,
there are detectors that are attached to satellites that can
detect um radiation into the atmosphere. Yeah, and apparently they've
gotten a lot better too. But the problem is is
that radiation there's a couple of things with actual radiation UM.
(24:46):
It can be shielded relatively easily with a thick layer
of concrete um or lead um, and the stuff that
does escape can get absorbed into the atmosphere. So I
think the detectors, like satellite detectors, are getting much better
than they were before. And probably the stuff that we
know about here in this article as probably ten years old.
(25:10):
I'm sure we're far more advanced than this article would
would say as far as something like a a radiation
detector attached to a satellite goes like even the two
year old article you think is behind Yeah, I think,
I think so, I think, yeah, yeah, I get what
you're laying down. So so I think that it's probably
(25:32):
much better. But again, UM radiation can be it can
be shielded. One thing that they that nuclear detectives have
figured out though, is that there's a part of a
nuclear reactor, uh, not a part of it, but something
that's created in nuclear reactors um neutrinos that you can't
(25:52):
do anything about. They're going to escape because they pass
so easily through matter that they will actually travel through
solid Earth unfazed by anything that comes in contact with UM.
And they've created this. Do you do you see Cosmos
the reboot with nil deGrasse Tyson? Did you see the
(26:13):
one where he was like in a boat in like
a new trino cave underground. So it's really neat, Like
he was standing up in a boat in this really
dark cave that had like little lights or something kind
of starlight. It was a romantic scene. And what where
he was was, um this cave underground. I think it's
(26:34):
the one in Ohio where it's underground in an old
salt mine and it's filled with water and it's underground
to protect it from cosmic rays that could give off
false readings. But it's meant to pick up new trinos
that are traveling through the Earth from UH nuclear reactors, right.
(26:54):
And the way that does that is since new trinos
interact like almost not at all with matter, which is
why they can pass un affected through solid earth. UM.
When it comes in contact with a certain atom in water,
it gives up the faintest flash of light and if
you have enough water, this is actually a pretty rare
(27:14):
occurrence when it happens. But if you have enough water,
it's going to happen eventually, and you're going to be
able to detect it with underwater photo sensors. Right, So
what they've done is fill this old salt mine with
a huge like supposedly it will take like a million
tons of water to detract to detect neutrinos from a
hundred a thousand kilometers away. Um, But when a hostile
(27:38):
nation or a nation that's not supposed to have a
nuclear program runs an on off cycle of their nuclear
enrichment reactor there enriching their nuclear material, you will be
able to detect that through neutrinos in your underground cave
neutrino detector. Isn't that insane? Yeah? Think about how much
(28:03):
trouble it is, but that it actually works, it's amazing.
I think it's amazing too. And and Neil deGrasse Tyson
is the man. Can we just say that again? Oh? Yeah,
for sure? All right. Should we take it a break here?
All right, we'll come back and we'll talk a little
bit more about sort of the latest and greatest technology
we have going as well as some other sneaky ways
(28:25):
to hide this kind of activity right after this, all right,
(28:50):
so I can't stress enough. That's uh. This great Economist
article called the New Detectives. UH really learned a lot
from it. And there's this UM kind of starts out
by talking about UM and this is if you have
not prevented someone from getting uh nuclear materials and they
(29:10):
are actually doing nuclear tests, which ideally you have stopped
the process before that. But let's be honest, sometimes things
slip through the cracks. People get their hands, or countries
get their hands or rogue nations and terrorists get their
hands on these materials and they want to test out
UM bombs and things. They are now using some amazing
(29:33):
UH equipment, seismic seismographic equipment. Would that be the way
it is? It? Yeah, to detect this stuff to the
point now there's a there's a group called the Preparatory
Commission for the Comprehensive Tests Band Treaty Organization. UH. And
that's a fancy way of saying. They listen around the
world with these seismograph machines to the point where doctor Zerbo,
(29:57):
which is the greatest name ever actually for like a
nuclear international nuclear scientists. Doctor Zerbo says, now it is
impossible to test with thus smallest nuclear weapon anywhere on
Earth in secret. They will hear it. Yep, it's amazing. Yeah.
The the ctbt O, the the Comprehensive Test Band Treaty Organization, Right,
(30:21):
is that correct? Correct? They have so I saw it
listed somewhere, but this this article kind of lays it out.
They have a hundred and seventy seismic stations worldwide, eleven
underwater hydroacoustic centers so you can detect the sound waves
in the ocean, sixty atmospheric infrasound listening stations. They're off
(30:43):
at that point, right, and then nineties six radio new
radio NUCLEIIED NUCLEAD sampling facilities. I think that's the ones
that like like those satellites that can detect radiation leaks.
I think that's that's like that. So yeah, like around
the world, they've got it locked down. You cannot set
off a nuclear weapon in them not know about it.
(31:04):
That is correct. Another big thing that they're doing now
is uh software, network analysis software. After nine eleven, America
really started ramping up. As everyone knows, there listening skills
um and not in like a polite my friend has
some issues they need to talk through way right, you
(31:26):
know what I mean. Uh, So they now have all
the software that can It's sort of I think the
feeling I get is what this software now does. It's
able to just draw from all these different areas, whether
it's email for social media, or phone calls or receipts
and credit card transactions like prism. Yeah, and it will
(31:49):
just it'll feed it all into these the the software
programs now that will eventually narrow it down to, Hey,
this person might be a batty because they have ticked
off uh not as an angered but they have checked
so many boxes in our software system of activities that
they're undertaking that you might want to go take a
(32:11):
look at them. Yeah, and the things that this did.
You say the name Aura, So Aura is a good
example of this kind of software. It's from Carnegie Melon
and basically it it has been adapted to not just
track terrorists, but to track nuclear scientists. Now I think
(32:32):
like thirty thousand of them around the world. So if
you're a nuclear scientist and you're in the prime of
your career and you publish an article every eighteen to
thirty six weeks on average, according to the computer, and
all of a sudden you just stop. You're going to
set off a red flag. They're going to wonder why
you stopped publishing at the height of your career, and
(32:53):
they're going to say, you know, it's entirely possible that
they got drafted into a nuclear military program where would
not be allowed to publish, so that might set off
a red flag. And then there's another computer, um I
think the Pentagon is set up called Constellation the Whopper,
which again is probably yeah, it's probably twenty years out
of date by now if it's in this article. But
(33:14):
this Constellation is a computer that takes the information from
all these other computer all these other softwares and put
them together and says, oh, well, not only did that
guy stop publishing at the height of his nuclear science career,
he also just moved within commuting distance of a um
a facility that is suspected by Army intelligence of possibly
(33:39):
being holding nuclear centrifuges that that aren't registered anywhere. Yeah,
and there uh, there are other programs. There's one software
program that uses what's called combinatorial mathematics, and what they
do is they analyze data to end up with a
set of criteria called centrality between this and degree, since
(34:00):
Radley centrality being how important someone is in the system.
Between this is their access to other people and the
degree there's a number of people they interact with and
the idea there is what they're looking for. Generally, our
network members that have high between this and low degree,
So those are probably like Osama bin Laden is a
(34:22):
good example. Like towards the end, he has access to
a lot of people, but he's not interacting with a
lot of people. Well, he's like a high up. A
higher up, I think is what It indicates somebody of
importance in the network. Right yeah, and um, that's this
is all extremely g whiz. But then you hear about, oh,
it's actually being applied in real life. Um back and
(34:42):
I think two thousand and ten eleven twelve, at least
five nuclear scientists working on Iran's nuclear program were murdered. Um.
One of them was like picking his child up or
dropping his child off at daycare, like just gunned down
by guys in the street or um carbon or something
like that. And the one thing that they had in
common was that they were all working on Iran's nuclear program. UM.
(35:08):
And they think that the Mossade used intelligence that was
gathered by these this type of software program to figure
out if you kill these people, it will really screw
up the program because they're important figures in this program.
Even though we don't know them. We know their names
and that's it. We don't know anything about them. Just
(35:29):
based on this metadata that that these programs put together,
we can tell you that if if they weren't around
any longer, it would set the whole program back. And
they did. Yeah, and uh, like I'll say in earlier,
the good news is is if you want to build
and again we're not talking about dirty bombs and stuff,
but if you want to build a nuclear warhead, there
are very specialized parts that you have to buy UM
(35:53):
in order to do so. So they have software that
monitors this stuff around the world, and what this article
calls UM they reveal choke points basically that they can monitor,
like the ceramic composites for the centerfuges that you have
to have in order to pull this off. There's only
so many companies that do that in the world. So UM,
(36:17):
I mean, that's the good news. You can't run out
to Walmart and buy the stuff to make this happen. So, uh,
it makes a little bit easier to monitor what's going
on to a certain degree. Um. That's gotta be a
huge help man having that. Oh yeah, especially together with
human intelligence, which apparently is still one of the best
(36:38):
ways to find out about a nuclear program. Um. There
was this one I think Syria was working on their
nuclear program and they had, with the assistance of North Korea,
they had built a facility where they lowered the floor, yes,
so that they could start their military nuclear program in
(36:59):
secret and um, rather than a cooling tower, they connected
to a nearby reservoir with underground pipes. Um. And they
had this whole thing set up. And if you were
looking at it, and you were a military analyst looking
for evidence of a nuclear facility being built, you would
immediately check that building off the list because it was
too low, too close to the ground, like the it
(37:21):
wasn't tall enough to house a nuclear facility. And they
did I'm sure over and over. I'm sure they saw
this building plenty of times. And it wasn't until um,
some human intelligence gave it up that it became clear
that no, actually this is this is a nuclear facility,
so it can you can fool the international even the
(37:44):
nuclear detectives can be fooled, is I guess what I'm saying,
which is kind of surprising. But one of the ways
that you do that is you you figure out how
to build your nuclear program in house. You get detected
when you start to spread out through the black mark
market or to that company that makes the composites needed
for centrifuges. Yeah, like Iran, for example, they used in
(38:07):
the in that same article. They can mind the uranium
themselves in the country, which is a little scary. And
then they can also or they at least had been
working on producing those center few droaters instead with carbon
fiber instead of the special steel that they need to outsource.
So all of a sudden, you're not on that list.
You're doing an in house and it I mean, it
(38:28):
seems like from reading this, like the good news is
are getting more and more specialized equipment that you can
detect stuff from further away, and our capabilities and the
software is getting better and better. But these places are
also finding more and more ways to side step traditional
manufacturing means, which is kind of scary at the same time. Yeah,
(38:48):
apparently Um Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program that he
was working on that he was able to come up
with I was mentioning it earlier, where UM he did
it by basically going retro. He used the process of
UM separating uranium isotopes through electro magnetism rather than centrifuges,
(39:10):
so he didn't need centrifuges. And apparently it's so low
tech and UM so out of use that no analysts
were looking for evidence of that, so they just totally
missed it. But he was still able to come up
with the nuclear program using that old, outdated technology purposefully
from what I understand. Wow. Yeah. And then of course
(39:32):
nuclear North Korea's nuclear program was just a total surprise
to everybody. I mean, people suspected it and we're very
concerned that it was going on, but it wasn't until
Kim Jong n or ill I can't remember which one
it would have been, but back in two thousand and
ten they invited as Stanford professor out and showed it
(39:52):
to him so he could go tell the world shocked
everybody done. Yeah, why in the world did they let
that happen? Yeah, I mean I don't I don't know
how it happened. I think it happened because of that
guy we mentioned earlier, a Q Khan from Pakistan who
was the father of Pakistan's military nuclear program UM, who
was educated in Europe and stole some blueprints for making
(40:16):
nuclear weapons and went about building Pakistan one right. And
then they started turning the countries like Libya, Iran, North
Korea and UM offering basically turn key military nuclear programs
based on Pakistan's designs for like a hundred million dollars.
And then he got He ended up as a scapegoat
(40:37):
for his nation and was placed under house arrest. Luxurious
house arrest, but still from what I understand, the guy
was very upset about this because he went from being
a treated like a god to being treated like, you know,
it's his fault that there's nuclear periliferation among Rugue states
UM and was finally released a few years I think
five years later, And I mean that guy, he deserves
(40:59):
his own episode. He was fascinating. I think still is.
I believe he's still around too. What's his name, a
Q Khan? Can we call it the wrath of con
That's what they did in the Atlantic. They I couldn't
believe it. Uh, so the big question is and the economists,
um thankfully asked that could you build a nuclear weapon
(41:20):
in secret? And uh, there's a couple of opinions there.
They asked the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, former Foreign Secretary
Rhyas Mohammed Khan. He said, Nope, I can't do that
in secret anymore. But uh, there was an anonymous American
State Department counter proliferation official who said it's not impossible,
(41:41):
so you know, don't don't be fooled. Yeah, it's a
little little, little worsome. Yeah, I mean you you really
like to think that nobody could do this anymore. But
apparently it is getting easier and easier. But like you said,
it's also making it easier and easier to detect. It's
like any illegal operations. Um, it's like a game of
(42:03):
cat and mouse with on the development side of developing.
Good guys developing stuff, bad guys developing stuff. Yeah, it's
really interesting. But in this case, this game of cat
and mouse, you have some of the smartest human beings
on the planet who are who have banded together to
say no, no, we're not gonna let this happen. Okay, Well,
(42:26):
if you want to know more about nuclear detectives or
nuclear forensics, start digging because there's plenty out there. And
man is it fascinating. Um, since I said it's fascinating,
it's time for listener mail. So before we do listener mail, buddy,
can we talk a little bit about our old friends
at the Cooperative for Education. Oh yes, let's chuck co Ed. Yeah.
(42:50):
The quick download with co ED is we went to
Guatemala quite a few years ago with them. They invited
to come down you, me and Jerry and I went down.
We saw the great work they do, like real on
the ground hard work helping children of Guatemala pulled themselves
out of poverty through education. Yeah. Yeah, it's in our
two part Guatemala special that everybody can go listen to
(43:11):
if you haven't heard it and get this, Chuck, So,
COED has another drive going on and they're making it
their mission to keep a thousand girls in Guatemala from
dropping out of school. By that's amazing, dude. It takes
twelve years of education to break the cyclopoverty in Guatemala,
but a poor rural Guatemalan has only one and twenty
chance of reaching that milestone. So they are literally identifying
(43:35):
young women to literally keep them in school. Like it's
not some nebulous campaign and you're not sure where your
money is going. You are helping a young woman in
Guatemala stay in school and get educated. Yep. So you
can sponsor one of those girls for seventy dollars a
month or if you want to do half of that,
thirty five dollars a month. COED will match you with
(43:56):
another sponsor to make sure that there is a student
who is able to continue her education and therefore eventually
break her family out of the cycle of poverty that
dropping out of school perpetuates. Yeah, it's really great. They're
awesome people. So if you weren't a good person this
year and you want to make up for it here
before the end of the year, or if you want
(44:16):
to start off in the right way, go to thousand
Girls Initiative dot org and that is all spelled out,
not the number one, thousand thousand Girls Initiative dot org
and you can actually pick out the student you want
to sponsor. Is just the best. Co ED is great
and we're really happy that we're still working with them. Yep.
So keep up the good work co ed and you
(44:39):
guys please please go help these guys out, all right?
Uh now on the listener mail, Yes, I'm gonna call
this UM restaurant health inspection from a manager's perspective. Okay,
do have permission to read this? I love listening to
the show on health inspections. Guys. Want to throw in
a couple of tidbits from my point of view. First,
you were spot on just about everything with your re arch,
(45:00):
including how some employees take no exception to sanitary practice.
Those employees tend to not have a very long career.
When the health inspector shows up and you see the
staff start to scramble in the business, we call that
the two minute drill. And that is not to say
that we don't keep our restaurant up to standards, because
we do, but we want it to be perfect. Typically,
the this made me feel a lot better by the
(45:20):
way reading this. Uh. Typically the hd H comes to
the restaurant at the most inopportune times, right in the
middle of a busy lunch service. At that point, the
kitchen is cooking one dishes at the same time servers
are running drinks and taking orders. Dirty dishes are stacking
up a bit in the back. With the Health Inspection
past fail scale being so specific, the slightest thing can
(45:41):
fail you anything from an ice scoop in the ice
spin to a fruit fly or a steak resting at
temperature that is off by two degrees. We as managers
like to continue to train our staff keep things tidy,
but also I have a few quick fixes in order
to maintain that a rating. Washing hands is a must
anytime food is handled, especially when the inspectors are on site.
(46:03):
As you know, it's a very nerve wracking time while
they're checking every nook and cranny. That is why we
managers are required by law to get health certified to
ensure we are training out staff properly and not allowing
any boots in the Brunswick stew he said, Broad worst
stew so I saw that I think he might be insane.
(46:25):
As always, thanks for an incredible podcast and providing us
with information on things we may not usually have knowledge
to prior all the best, Derek, he said, ps. We
have a remarkable cuisine at my place, so if you
ever are in the area, come on buy and we'll
treat you to some great food. We have the best
Broad worst stew in the region. Well, he didn't say
what restaurant he worked at. Oh, actually it's in his email.
(46:48):
I'm not gonna read that, but they're in Boston, so
maybe okay, and we go back to the wilbur We
can go get some Boston cream pie cake and then
some Broad Worst Delicious. Yeah cool, Thanks a lot. What
is the guy's name, Derek? Thanks a lot, Derek. That
was a great email, and yes, in need, it did
make It made me feel a lot better to Chuck.
If you want to make me and Chuck feel better,
well just send us an email. First. You can tweet
(47:11):
to us. I'm at josh On Clark and s Y
s K podcast, Chuck's Man in the Facebook pages at
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. Is always joined us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(47:31):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how Stuff Works dot com.
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