Thread 16834897

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_Station

what are the odds the Aum Shinrikyo actually managed to test a nuke in Australia? or is it just a conspiracy theory? were there any independent investigations by nuclear scientists? I heard that nuclear forensics is pretty advanced nowadays so I guess it would be pretty easy to confirm

I assume if they did test the nuke no goverment or intelligence agency would admit it because people would panic

why would they use sarin if they had a nuke?

>>16834899
maybe they weren't sure it would work, so they first tested it, then started preparing another one but couldn't get enough materials?

>>16834897 (OP)
It's possible. I've read several articles where they were actively recruiting physicists for this exact reason, however...they would need either a shit load of uranium to enrich it (unlikely) or stolen material from someone else (likely). Any facility that has ever had the IAEA investigate it has the composition of their fissile materials logged. This is in turn sent to the DoD where they use it to determine weapon composition from sniffer planes. We also would have picked up the x-ray double flash on our early warning satellite constellations. My personal thought is that it was the US government's first test of something else that they further refined in the early 2000's, and middle of nowhere Australia is a good spot.