University physics student designed an atomic bomb to prove that nearly anyone with information now publicly available could do the same thing.
The student, John A. Phillips, a 21‐year‐old senior, using information obtained from unclassified sources, has prepared a 34‐page report said to contain plans for a crude plutonium device weighing 125 pounds and allegedly carrying a charge one‐third as powerful as the one detonated over Hiroshima in World War II.
“The point was to show,” he said, “that any undergraduate with a physics background can do it, and therefore that it is reasonable to assume that terrorists could do it, too.”
Mr. Phillips, who took four months for research and to complete his plans, did not build his bomb, and scientists familiar with his work have refused to evaluate the plans.
But the New Haven student, whose father is a professor of mechanical engineering at Yale, contends that his academic advisers have assured him that the device is “workable.”
By the time Mr. Phillips completed his plans, he had concluded that “billions of dollars and years of research are no longer required for the design and construction of a fission bomb,” but that “fanatical dedication to the goal and scientific know‐how are.”
Mr. Phillips said yesterday while outlining his plans for the bomb, which he contends could be built for $2,000, that he could have designed a more extensive one but that he had limited himself “to the crudest, cheapest and simplest device.”
“Any other physics major could do this better,” Mr. Phillips asserted. “It was just luck that I got on the right track. I'm really one of the poorest students in the physics department.”
While i am sure his comments on it costing $2,000 ($11,300 today) are broadly exaggerating, the key point remains. The information needed is really not the obstacle in the process of acquiring a nuclear bomb.
