What is RED MERCURY (for Nuclear Program)
Avner Turniansky
What is Red Mercury? It has been mentioned in the media recently
as a substance used for nuclear programs. Any Clues?
amde...@gold.up.ac.za
>Subject: What is RED MERCURY (for Nuclear Program)
>From: Avner Turniansky <tu...@granite.fh.huji.ac.il>
>Date: 23 Mar 1995 16:20:30 GMT
>Hi
>What is Red Mercury? It has been mentioned in the media recently
>as a substance used for nuclear programs. Any Clues?
In our country they even had a special TV program on it - lots of cloak and
dagger stuff - but very little sound scientific information.
In my opinion 'red mercury' is a fine example of how a story get a tail
untill it becomes one big serpent. Let me explain why.
Many mercuric COMPOUNDS (solids) are in shade of red, eg. HgO, HgI2, HgS,
etc. In other words, it is quite easy to associate the ELEMENT mercury
(liquid) with red. AAs far as I know, no amalgam (liquid solution) of
mercury with any other metal is red. In the case of copper, (which might
produce a red shade in the mercury) it is difficult to produce a
concentrated amalgam.
Some mercury COMPOUNDS such as mercuric fulminate Hg(CNO)2 are notoriously
unstable and explosive. Mercuric fulminate was once commonly used as a
detonator before TNT was discovered. It is thus also quite easy to associate
the ELEMENT mercury with explosions.
Mercury (Z=80) is one of the last heavy elements with stable isotopes and is
often one of the products of radio-active decay. It has also been tested as
a coolant in nuclear reactors, but it is not as successful as for example
sodium. Thus it is also quite easy to associate mercury with the nuclear
industry.
Mercury and its compunds are poisonous - often extremely toxic. They
cause irrevrsible damage to the nervous system. They should be handled by
great care and never be played with. Thus it is also quite easy to associate
mercury with secrecy and control.
Now add people who are easily misled by myths, who have little respect
for facts and who needs to make money, and you have the
Saga of Red Mercury.
Obviously, as scientists, we have to be very sceptic, even about facts.
Some facts may still be unknown or a secret. Thus it might be that a red
amalgam of mercury with some radioactive element exists. I have never red
about it in any open scientific source (books, journals). But I also do
not work in the secretive nuclear industry. Someone there might enlighten
us.
Remember, mercury, in whatever form, is either toxic or can easily become
toxic. Handle it with great care. Never dump even minute quantities of it,
but make it available for recycling.
Best wishes
At de Lange
A M de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre
University of Pretoria
Tadeusz Gorecki
Those were the days when the Russians tried to sell everything, including
the infamous God-knows-what, and some people frantically, yet
unsuccessfully tried to figure out what it really is. The interesting pieces
that I remember follow. This stuff supposedly has liquid consistency, colour
defined as "burgundy", and EXTREMELY high density (as far as I remember the
figure given was 19.2 kg/L). It seems to me that it must be some amalgam,
otherwise it would be virtually impossible to imagine a liquid of such a
density.
Tadeusz
>>Hi
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tadeusz Gorecki
University of Waterloo
Department of Chemistry
(519)885-1211 ex. 6940
ere...@netvision.net.il
In article <amdelange.3...@gold.up.ac.za>,
> In article <3ks74e$k...@shum.cc.huji.ac.il> Avner Turniansky
<tu...@granite.fh.huji.ac.il> writes:
> >Subject: What is RED MERCURY (for Nuclear Program)
> >From: Avner Turniansky <tu...@granite.fh.huji.ac.il>
> >Date: 23 Mar 1995 16:20:30 GMT
>
> >Hi
>
> >What is Red Mercury? It has been mentioned in the media recently
> >as a substance used for nuclear programs. Any Clues?
>
> In our country they even had a special TV program on it - lots of cloak
and
> dagger stuff - but very little sound scientific information.
>
> In my opinion 'red mercury' is a fine example of how a story get a tail
> untill it becomes one big serpent. Let me explain why.
>
> At de Lange
>
> A M de Lange
> Gold Fields Computer Centre
> University of Pretoria
>
I tracked this legend for some time and as far as we know, this is another
example of the "Nigerian Money scam". here is how it works:
someone asks about red mercury. you inquire and someone from the east
promises it. Then you get a price, submit to the 'buyer', who is willing to
pay a hefty sum if this is indeed red mercury which 'can only be verified
in den hague or geneve or somewhere out of your reach'.
so you say OK.
the the answer is to pay $50,000 for the verification 'which will be
returned to you once the test is OK'.
if you're foolish enough, you don't see the $$, nor red mercury, but the
clever con-man flies with your $50,000.
moral: red mercury is the stuff teat red ridinghood uses to feed her
grandma.
Aloys Huettermann
out to be a mixture of mercury and antimone sulfide (which is of course,
bright red). They brought it in a local newspaper here.
Why anyone thinks this stuff might be useful is beyond any reason for me.
Ciao, Alu
Juan Peron
The real point of this is missed by most.
For those who know something about nuclear energy: Ask your self, where
is mercury on the curve of nuclear binding energies? How much energy
would be released in the nuclear fission of mercury? In what other
exothermic reactions can red mercury participate? Is red mercury
something which might be involved in a design of a crazed thermonuclear
reaction design engineer?
Erick Singley
with the subject. Questions and source inquires might be directed towards
the author of the folling article, as I have not followed up on it.
Erick
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From: ols...@plasma.kth.se (Goran Olsson, Plasma Physics, KTH)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.chem,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: Red Mercury pops up again
Date: 21 Apr 1994 16:04:20 GMT
Organization: Plasma Physics, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden
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Red Mercury
- Russians have a clear lead on the black market - the West whitewashing? :-)
[: Excerpts from the huge result of a newspaper search (?) kindly forwarded by
dan...@panix.com. My comments and questions in colon-brackets :]
-o-
The export price of the material is 350,000 dollars a kilo. According to a
report by Yevgeny Primakov, chief of Russia's external intelligence service, to
[then] Secretary of State Gennady Burbulis of March 24, 1992, red mercury is
used in the production of high- precision fuses for conventional bombs and fuses
for nuclear bombs, in the starting of nuclear reactors, in the production of
anti-radar coatings for military hardware and in the manufacture of self-
targeting warheads for high-precision missiles.
[: A typical version of the hoax, matched to the level of generals, politicians
and the press. Below are some details that might be of interest to
scientists. :]
-o-
In recent years unclassified research has been conducted on a new class of
materials (including red mercury) , referred to as ballotechnics. These
materials use a number of elements in lowdensity powder form. When they are
subjected to high-pressure shock compression, chemical reactions take place
which under certain conditions can produce energy concentrations considerably in
excess of those from high explosives. Ballotechnics therefore offer a
significantly greater prospect for success in attaining a verylow-yield
pure-fusion weapon than the high-explosive techniques we and other nations have
explored. Such success would open a nuclear Pandora's box that U.S. policy would
just as soon see closed.
[: Attributed to Sam Cohen :]
[: Fill in, please! :]
-o-
"The first synthesis of ' red mercury' or the mercurial salt of antimonous
acid, Hg2Sb207, was done in the USSR in 1968 in the accelerator at [word
omitted]. Because of its technical and operational features this accelerator
makes it possible successfully to make alloys of strontium, caesium and other
isotopes to produce ' red mercury' .
"The raw material is manufactured at enterprises of the former USSR Ministry
of Atomic Power in the cities of (we omit their names - authors). After the
synthesis stage at the above-named enterprises the raw material is implanted
with a radioactive isotope in the accelerator. As a result of this a product
with a density of up to 23 units is obtained. Shelf life of the finished product
varies between four and 12 months depending on the alloying isotope.
"It is the opinion of nuclear experts that abroad there is only one
accelerator, the one at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in
Switzerland, that could be used to implant ' red mercury' . However, in order
for it to be used for this purpose it is necessary to carry out a whole series
of studies and do further work on the design. This factor, and also the
availability in the states of the former USSR of significant quantities of
mercury raw material, determine our country's special position in the production
of ' red mercury' .
-o-
As the deadliest version of this legend has it, red mercury is an antimony
mercury oxide that was developed in the Soviet Union as a simpler, more
efficient trigger for atomic bombs. Such triggers, which surround a core of
plutonium or enriched uranium, must have at least two attributes: They must be
shaped so precisely that when exploded they uniformly compress the core, setting
off a chain reaction; and they must provide an adequate supply of free neutrons
to sustain that reaction. Red mercury supposedly combines both functions
within one substance; moreover, because it is liquid it can be shaped more
easily, simplifying one of the more difficult aspects of bomb design.
-o-
The mixed signals have likewise driven some Western physicists to
distraction, as they attempt to reconcile what is known with what's rumored.
"It's a very odd story, and at first sight it sounds very improbable,"
acknowledges Frank Barnaby, a noted British nuclear weapons expert. "But the
thing that has to give you pause is the seniority of the Russians who are
claiming it exists and has these applications, and it's very hard to see these
people involved in a hoax."
-o-
Barnaby postulates a liquefied form of the compound to which is added, in a
reactor or particle accelerator, a transuranic actinide such as californium 252,
"an extremely good emitter" of neutrons.
[: Sounds like a bad idea. Isn't the presence of stray neutrons a problem already
in Pu? :]
John Hassard, a lecturer in nuclear physics at Britain's Imperial College
and an expert in nuclear weapons proliferation, is even more skeptical but
also reluctant to declare red mercury a hoax. "If you put a gun to my head
and forced me to say whether it's true or not, I would probably have to say
it's not true, but I don't think we can be so cavalier as to dismiss it," he
contends.
Hassard muses that antimony and mercury are both very heavy atoms which, when
joined, create a lattice of "boxes" just about the size of plutonium atoms --
"and that makes me think you might be able to drift plutonium into it. Do that
and you overcome, on one stroke, the problems of thermodynamics in the implosion
of your nuclear weapon."
-o-
SO what exactly is red mercury? According to scientists in Russia who claim
to be familiar with its chemical properties, it combines two important functions
in a nuclear weapon by acting as a conventional explosive and a powerful source
of neutrons.
In a normal atom bomb, explosives such as TNT are used to produce a powerful
implosive force on a ball of plutonium, crushing it so that it becomes an
unstable critical mass. An electronic gun mechanism then fires a burst of
high-energy neutrons into the plutonium, initiating a fission chain reaction and
releasing huge amounts of energy.
In its basic form red mercury is a powder, but it can be converted into a
liquid by pressure and radiation. It then acquires explosive properties and can
affect atoms of a variety of elements called actinides that are powerful neutron
emitters, substituting for the TNT and the neutron gun and making bomb design
much simpler.
This technology, involving a liquid explosive, is apparently unknown in the
West, but a scientific paper published in 1968 by Du Pont, the American chemical
company which makes explosives for the US nuclear weapons programme, mentions
the synthesis of a chemical with the same formula as red mercury. The
compound, HgSbO, was made in Du Pont laboratories and added to the international
chemical register, where it is still listed as number 20720-76-7. No
documentation exists to explain its possible uses and the company was not
prepared to comment.
-o-
Juan_Peron
>=7F In a normal atom bomb, explosives such as TNT are used to produce a powerful
>implosive force on a ball of plutonium, crushing it so that it becomes an
>unstable critical mass.
The above describes technology invented in the time of the vacuum tube. It is inconceivable that
in the time since then, creative science has not found a more techically sophisticated method
for initiating an atomic burst. What these may be, is clouded in mystery, however.
> An electronic gun mechanism then fires a burst of
>high-energy neutrons into the plutonium, initiating a fission chain reaction and
>releasing huge amounts of energy.
The above statement is cleary an example of disinformation. Plutonium is subject to fission from
thermal neutrons. Although, spontaneous fission may be a rare event with plutonium so that a
external source of thermal neutrons is required, a little U235 would suffice nicely.