The Blue Danube's genuine blueprints were put into a public library archive a decade ago due to public servant's silly diligence. Everybody could walk in and copy them. You could build the bomb with a CNC lathe in your garage then, guaranteed working. You only had to find some highly refined fissile material to fill it, that is the hard part.
Still, when BBC wrote about this issue last year, the blueprints were removed from public eye and put into secret archive. Weapons experts said nobody is likely to be interest in this design nowadays because it is so heavy at 1300 kilograms. 195.70.32.136 10:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it was me guv.
It was in 2002, and I have to confess it was me who spotted the files and photocopied them, before speaking to a journalist contact and a Member of Parliament. The plans were withdrawn and reclassified 'SECRET' the following day. But I still have the photocopies. Nor can the Ministry of Defence erase my personal memory banks. Probably.
For a sight of the original newspaper report, Google my name, Brian Burnell, and it should pop-up at several sites including the original Daily Telegraph report. The files contained various engineering blueprints, but the two key documents were a sectional, dimensioned drawing on foolscap of Sir William Penney's original sketch (in his own hand) for the fissile core, and a drawing of the Urchin impact initiator. I still have a photocopy of that also.
However, I worked on Blue Danube as a young design engineer in the 1950's, and agreed then to abide by the UK's Official Secrets Act. That's not a disposable committment; its for life. Unless the files are later declassified again ....
While its true to say that no ill-intentioned person would copy this design (for a variety of reasons) there are easier ways for a sub-national group to build a workable if inefficient and crude weapon. But a common misconception is that it cannot or never will be done.
Remember that such a weapon would be built to be used shortly after completion. The elaborate and sophisticated products of weapons-engineering laboratories are very different, and are intended to serve a different purpose. Firstly, they are not designed to be used. They are designed to have a long shelf life, for long-term storage with minimal servicing while remaining ultra-reliable and safe. Their only expected usage is likely to be as a bargaining chip or to wave about a bit in the faces of other states. It is expected that they will never be used. A sub-national terrorist group isn't interested in a weapon of that sophistication. And they have so much experience and skill with conventional explosives they would be stupid to branch out into weapons that they have no experience of; and use of one would invite annihilation.
I can be contacted via my talk page. Those blue prints did reveal the use of a 4 piece levitated pit imploded by a hollow high explosive sphere as I stated. This information is correct and should have not been removed from this article by fast fission. I understand some persons are bound by the british official secrets act in discussing the Blue Danube design but some private persons who know about it can discuss it.
I have seen the actual blueprints of the Blue Danube nuclear weapon , and I know my description of its design is in fact actually correct. tmayes
People like fast fission* et el should realize there are some wickipedians who truly do have accurate , complete , and detailed information about nuclear weapon physics, and nuclear weapon design. Neither I nor them will actually publish anything on wickipedia that is not already in the public realm* because of the sensitive nature of this material. People like fast fission however are wrong to doubt what we do actualy write about nuclear weapons here and question its accuracy however** tmayes I will not claim we are infallible * but people like fast fission are surely more fallible then we are when they write about this. tmayes