Red mercury was described by many commentators[SUP][
who?][/SUP], and the exact nature of its supposed working mechanism varied widely among them. In general, however, none of these explanations appear to be scientifically or historically supportable.
[h=3][
edit] Background[/h] Traditional
staged thermonuclear weapons consist of two parts, a
fission "primary" and a fusion/fission "secondary". The energy released by the primary when it explodes is used to (indirectly) compress the secondary and start a
fusion reaction within it. Conventional explosives are far too weak to provide the level of compression needed.
The primary is generally built as small as possible, due to the fact that the energy released by the secondary is much larger, and thus building a larger primary is generally inefficient. There is a lower limit on the size of the primary that can be built, known as the
critical mass. For weapons grade
plutonium, this is around 10 kg. This can be reduced through the use of
neutron reflectors or clever arrangements of explosives to compress the core, but these methods generally add to the size and complexity of the resulting device.
Due to the need for a fission primary, and the difficulty of purifying weapons-grade fissile materials, the majority of
arms control efforts to limit
nuclear proliferation rely on the detection and control of the fissile material and the equipment needed to obtain it.
[h=3][
edit] Shortcut to fissionable material[/h] A theory popular in the mid-1990s was that red mercury facilitated the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade purity. Conventionally, such enrichment is usually done with
Zippe-type centrifuges, and takes several years. Red mercury was speculated[SUP][
who?][/SUP] to eliminate this costly and time-consuming step. Although this would not eliminate the possibility of detecting the material, it could escape detection during enrichment as the facilities hosting centrifuges normally used in this process are very large and require equipment that can be fairly easily tracked internationally. Eliminating such equipment would in theory greatly ease the construction of a clandestine nuclear weapon.
[h=3][
edit] Red Mercury
is weapons material[/h] Another common claim[SUP][
who?][/SUP] is that Red Mercury is nothing more than a
code name for high-quality
uranium or
plutonium, extracted from any number of Soviet weapons labs and being offered on the open market.
[h=3][
edit] Shortcut to fusible material[/h] A key part of the secondary in a
fusion bomb is
Lithium-6-deuteride. When irradiated with high-energy
neutrons, Li-6 creates
tritium, which mixes with the deuterium in the same mixture and fuses at a relatively low temperature. Russian weapon designers have reported (1993) that red mercury was the Soviet codename for Lithium-6, which has an affinity for mercury and tends to acquire a red colour due to mercuric impurities during its separation process.[SUP]
[15][/SUP][SUP]
[16][/SUP]
[h=3][
edit] Red Mercury as a ballotechnic[/h]
Samuel T. Cohen, the "father of the
neutron bomb", claimed for some time that red mercury is a powerful explosive-like chemical known as a
ballotechnic. The energy released during its reaction is enough to directly compress the secondary without the need for a fission primary in a
thermonuclear weapon. He claimed that he learned that the Soviet scientists perfected the use of red mercury and used it to produce a number of
softball-sized "pure fusion" bombs weighing as little as 10 lb (4.5 kg), which he claimed were made in large numbers.[SUP]
[17][/SUP]
He went on to claim that the reason this is not more widely known is that elements within the US power structure are deliberately keeping it "under wraps" due to the frightening implications such a weapon would have on nuclear proliferation. Since a red mercury bomb would require no fissile material, it would seemingly be impossible to protect against its widespread proliferation given current arms control methodologies. Instead of trying to do so, they simply claim it doesn't exist, while acknowledging its existence privately. Cohen also claimed that when President
Boris Yeltsin took power, he secretly authorized the sale of red mercury on the international market, and that fake versions of it were sometimes offered to gullible buyers.[SUP]
[17][/SUP]
Cohen's claims appear to be difficult to support scientifically. The amount of energy released by the fission primary is thousands of times greater than that released by conventional explosives, and it appears[SUP][
who?][/SUP] that the "red mercury" approach would be orders of magnitude smaller than required. Furthermore, ballotechnic materials are those that do
not explode, so it is difficult to understand how their energy could be used to produce compression at all.[SUP][
original research?][/SUP]
Additionally, it appears there is no independent confirmation of any sort of Cohen's claims to the reality of red mercury. The scientists[SUP][
who?][/SUP] in charge of the labs where the material would have been made have publicly dismissed the claims (see below), as have numerous US colleagues, including
Edward Teller.
According to Cohen,[SUP]
[17][/SUP] veteran nuclear weapon designer Dr.
Frank Barnaby conducted secret interviews with Russian scientists who told him that red mercury was produced by dissolving mercury antimony oxide in mercury, heating and
irradiating the resultant
amalgam, and then removing the elemental mercury through evaporation.[SUP]
[18][/SUP] The irradiation was reportedly carried out by placing the substance inside a nuclear reactor.[SUP]
[19][/SUP]
[h=3][
edit] Stealth paint[/h] As mentioned earlier, one of the origins of the term "red mercury" was in the Russian newspaper
Pravda, which claimed that red mercury was "
a super-conductive material used for producing high-precision conventional and nuclear bomb explosives, 'stealth' surfaces and self-guided warheads."[SUP]
[20][/SUP] Any substance with these sorts of highly differing properties would be suspect by most, but the stealth story continued to have some traction long after most had dismissed the entire story.
[h=3][
edit] Nuclear "sting" operations[/h] Red Mercury is thought to be the invention of an intelligence agency or criminal gang for the purpose of deceiving terrorists and rogue states who were trying to acquire nuclear technology on the black market.[SUP]
[21][/SUP] One televised report indicated that the
Soviet Union encouraged the
KGB and
GRU to arrange
sting operations for the detection of those seeking to deal in nuclear materials.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP] The Soviet intelligence services allegedly created a myth of the necessity of "red mercury" for the sorts of nuclear devices that
terrorists and rogue governments might seek. Political entities that already had nuclear weapons did nothing to debunk the myth.
[h=3][
edit] Red Mercury in southern Africa[/h] Organisations involved in landmine clearance and unexploded ordinance disposal noted a belief amongst some communities in southern Africa that Red Mercury may be found in certain types of ordnance. Attempting to extract Red Mercury, purported to be highly valuable, was reported as a motivation for people dismantling items of unexploded ordnance, and suffering death or injury as a result. In some cases it was reported that unscrupulous traders may be deliberately promoting this misconception in an effort to build a market for recovered ordnance.[SUP]
[22][/SUP]
[h=3][
edit] Saudi Arabia[/h] In April 2009 it was reported from Saudi Arabia that rumors that Singer sewing machines contained "red mercury" had caused the prices of such machines to massively increase in the Kingdom, with some paying up to
SR 200,000 for a single machine which could previously have been bought for SR 200.[SUP]
[23][/SUP] Believers in the rumor claimed that the presence of red mercury in the sewing machines' needles could be detected using a mobile telephone; if the line cut off when the telephone was placed near to the needle, this supposedly proved that the substance was present.
In
Medina there was a busy trade in the sewing machines, with buyers seen using mobile phones to check the machines for red mercury content, while it was reported that others had resorted to theft, with two tailors' shops in Dhulum broken into and their sewing machines stolen. At other locales, there were rumors that a Kuwait-based multinational had been buying up the Singer machines, while in Al-Jouf, the residents were led to believe that a local museum was buying up any such machines that it could find, and numerous women appeared at the museum offering to sell their Singer machines.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
There was little agreement among believers in the story as to the exact nature or even color of the red mercury, while the supposed uses for it ranged from it being an essential component of nuclear power, to having the ability to summon
jinn, extract gold, or locate buried treasure and perform other forms of magic. The official spokesman for the
Riyadh police said that the rumors had been started by gangs attempting to swindle people out of their money, and denied the existence of red mercury in sewing machines.[SUP]
[24][/SUP]
