A portable mini-atomic, less than two kilograms. The californium bomb is for many only an urban legend: prohibitive costs and difficulty in finding this complicated element make one doubt the possibility that it is used for a dirty bomb to be used in the West. Moreover the californium being highly radioactive must be transported in special hermetic containers, which besides being difficult to buy also have a cost and a weight remarkable.
It must be considered, however, that those who intend to make use of this technology will hardly worry about the damage to the environment or the well-being of the people who come into contact with it. If anything, the only limitation is that the transport of radioactive material could alarm the detectors, even if the bomb should be sought by the police.
Il californium is a chemical element identifiable by the symbol Cf and with the atomic number 98. It is considered to be an extremely radioactive element, the main peculiarity of which is having practical applications despite being in the class of transuranic elements. This class of elements are precisely defined transuranic because their atomic number exceeds that of Uranium (which is 92), they are not present in nature but have been observed after artificial synthesis of common elements. Calcium-252 is in fact a strong neutron emitter: by exploiting this property, it is used as a source of start-up for some nuclear reactors, to find layers of water and oil during drilling of wells. And again as a source of neutrons when searching for gold and silver deposits. In practice it is used in almost all cases for its enormous radioactive potential. In the medical field these elements are used as a substitute for some therapies for the fight against cervical and brain cancer.
The penetration of neutrons into the materials makes the californium useful in detectors such as fuel rod scanners in nuclear reactors and nuclear aircraft radiography. Given and considering the very small critical mass, weighing about 5 kg, we could not help thinking of the use of californium for a possible mini-atomic bomb.
At present there are no reliable sources on the creation of Californian bombs either in Middle Eastern countries or in Western laboratories, certainly those in possession of such technology are reluctant to post propaganda posters.
It is interesting to tell a curious episode that rose to the news as the only case in which the existence of bombs of the size of a woman's handbag was admitted, perhaps composed with californium. The 7 September 1997 Russian army general Aleksandr Lebed (photo) argued with certainty in an interview with Sixty Minutes that the former Soviet Union had not only produced in large quantities, micro-atomic bombs but that about a hundred had been mysteriously lost, lost in nothing. These miniaturized weapons could be as big as a small backpack or a bag but they had been lost from the official records several years ago. The Russian government, under pressure from the United States, declared that it had never built such devices and did not have the capacity to create miniaturized devices. Obviously the yellow remains still outstanding, but the conspiracy fanatics see in the mysterious death of General Lebed in the 2002 more than sufficient proof of the veracity of his statements.
Evaluating the pros and cons of using a nuclear weapon in the West (as in any part of the world) is very different from the non-linear model of war we are fighting against terrorism, especially the Islamic one. The use of a dirty bomb would imply a total war, the beginning of the one that has all the nuances of a war that we could define world.
