Everyone Know What a Spark-Gap is?

[The Whiskey Priest]

It’s the thing that makes the bomb go BOOM!!

It would seem that an Israeli/South African business man was engaged in trying to illegally export several of these to the Pakistani black-market.

As you may or may not know the Pakistani black-market is thought to have direct ties to all sort of bad people, mostly those operating in the Kashmir.

There is a long piece in Mother Jones about the case: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/middleman.html

Among other things it would seem that Bush and his minions are not very interested in controlling the Spark-gaps….which by the way have a dual use of being used to bust up kidney stones.

A taste of the story:

“THE KARNI CASE RAISES questions about the use of third-country conduits for nuclear proliferation, about loopholes in the reporting of the sales of dual-use items, and about the ability of middlemen to mask dangerous transactions in the cloak of ordinary business. Those questions pervade the industry. On a gray day in late January, a hundred or so Silicon Valley technology executives filed into a ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel off Highway 101 in the bedroom community of Santa Clara, California. The scene was like any other gathering of specialists in a suburban hotel: airless, loaded with lexicon, scattered with porcelain cups of half-finished coffee. The subject, however, was far from mundane. The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security was making its Northern California stop for a two-day seminar in Export Control regulations—informing the assembled salesmen and designers of some of America’s most sophisticated technology how to maneuver through the bureaucracy established to control the sale of dual-use technology to “the bad guys,” as one Commerce Department official explained to me. “
Don’t it make you feel all warm, safe and fuzzy?

[punpirate]

1. Well, a "spark-gap" isn't what you describe, but...

... that's not really the issue.

The device in question isn't that complicated to build. It's just easier to buy them on the open market than to gear up indigenous industry to make them. It's not the device that makes all else immaterial.

[The Whiskey Priest]

2. No...but it sure helps

and according to the article there are not that many producers of the Spark-gap

"Triggered spark gaps are unremarkable in appearance—each is a cylinder set atop a four-inch-square black box—and small enough to fit in the pocket of a raincoat. They emit an intense electrical pulse whose timing and duration are controlled to the microsecond. Hospitals use the devices to power lithotripters, which deliver an electrical punch that pounds kidney stones to dust so they can be expelled from the body.

That, however, is not their only function. Installed into an enriched uranium casing, a triggered spark gap can ignite a nuclear explosion.


Karni, according to the Justice Department, was in the middle of a deal exporting 200 of the devices to a buyer who might use them for just such a purpose. The buyer was Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman with close ties to Pakistan’s military and who has been linked by U.S. government officals to militant Islamic groups, some of which are suspected to be arming fighters in the Kashmiri conflict."

[punpirate]

3. It's a minor part in the assembly of...

... a nuclear weapon. Minor.

[The Whiskey Priest]

4. Minor or not....it is a restricted item

number 2641 I think.....and enough to gain the gentleman a long term in the can....

[punpirate]

6. Yes, very true...

... unless one thinks one can make a dollar on it.

I'm not saying that this item shouldn't be restricted--it has a very limited list of non-nuclear weapon uses.

What I am saying is that this sort of reporting is meant to get people terribly excited about something that is not the central problem.

Cheers.

[BiggJawn]

8. Really? Wow!

Don't tell Homeland Insecurity, but i think most, if not all, the major members of the American Wireless Association have at least ONE spark gap in their collections...

So are they using straight, quenched, rotary, rotary quenched?

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Oh! It has something to do with bombs.....

Thought this might be a misplaced Lounge thread.

:evilgrin:

And it doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

[MrSandman]

7. That's okay....

I thought it was a really old radio transmitter.

[ltfranklin]

9. Do I recall...

That spark gaps have been used to detonate radio-controlled bombs? They put out an enormous amount of radio-frequency energy on a wide spectrum.

[MrSandman]

10. All I know is...

That the spark gap transmitters put out a broad signal covering vast amounts of frequency. IIRC, the receivers of that time were fine tuned by changing antenna length. The wide spectrum limits them to Morse operation.

http://www.vistech.net/users/w1fji/spark.html

[RetroLounge]

11. I think the spark gap is about .035 on my Oldsmobile

:hi:

RL