| ▲ | ggm 17 hours ago |
| As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion. An earthquake bomb would disrupt both. You wouldn't be starting the feed cycle up rapidly, but since we're told Iran has stockpiles, this goes to sustainable delivery of materials more than specific short term risk. As a strategy, I see this as flawed. A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials. (This does not mean to imply I support either bombing or production of weapons grade materiel. It's a comment to outcome, not wisdom) |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials. A dirty bomb is basically Hollywood nonsense, and wouldn't use uranium to begin with because it isn't very radioactive. The premise is that you put radioactive materials into a conventional explosive to spread it around. But spreading a kilogram of something over a small area is boring because you can fully vaporize a small area using conventional explosives, spreading a kilogram of something over a large area is useless because you'd be diluting it so much it wouldn't matter, and spreading several tons of something over a large area is back to "you could do more damage by just using several tons of far cheaper conventional explosives". |
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| ▲ | dralley 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Also anything that is dangerous enough to actually be scary in dirty bomb form, like Cobalt-60, would be impossible to handle without providing a lethal dose of radiation to anyone working with he material within minutes if not seconds (presumably a reasonablely large & dangerous amount of this material is involved). At least, not without incredibly expensive equipment. And by the time you factor in those prerequisites it's just not worth it. | |
| ▲ | bandrami 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The toxicity of the Uranium would be a bigger problem than the radioactivity | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And has the same issue with dilution, and is even more boring because there are much cheaper things with more chemical toxicity than uranium too, like lead. | |
| ▲ | adastra22 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with. |
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| ▲ | gh02t 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Uranium, especially highly enriched uranium, is not very radioactive. That's one of the reasons its useful for weapons. UF6 is chemically really nasty, but it's heavy and also you have criticality issues that limit how much you can pack into a confined space before it explosively disassembles. That is to say, it would make an extremely poor dirty bomb that would do very little. It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that. Far more concerning is the possibility that they give it away to someone else. Enrichment is nonlinear, going from 60% to the 90% needed for weapons is a fairly trivial amount of work. |
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| ▲ | anonymars 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that. I wouldn't discount it, though. Remember, feelings matter more than facts. Magnitudes more people die on the road than in the air, but we know how well that translates to fear and action. I mean heck, how about 9/11 compared to COVID? Wearing a mask for a while: heinous assault on freedom, Apple pie, and the American way. Meanwhile, the post-9/11 security and surveillance apparatus: totally justified to keep America safe | | |
| ▲ | gh02t 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, my point is there are much better options that would also induce fear and actually be effective. Fentanyl strapped to an explosive, or any of a ton of other chemical agents. Iran would do far more damage -- and create a deep source of fear that would likely have lingering consequences for decades -- by giving their HEU away rather than making an ineffective dirty bomb. There is no way anybody who knows what they had would use it that way. Even the most fanatical member of the Iranian regime understands what to do with the material better than that. | |
| ▲ | XorNot 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | While true, the problem is it wouldn't meaningfully change the security situation for Iran. Deliverable nuclear weapons make you invasion proof - nobody wants to risk it. A "dirty bomb" isn't something that can come flying in on an ICBM and eliminate large chunks of your nation - the threat of it is more likely to enhance aggression rather then deter it. |
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| ▲ | throwaway2037 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Enrichment is nonlinear
Can anyone explain the science behind this statement? To be clear: I believe it, and I have seen multiple reputable sources say that Iran can enrich to 90% within a few months. I was surprised that it is so quick. | | |
| ▲ | cryptonector 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You start with natural uranium, which has .72% U-235. Getting from that to 20% is _hard_. You need large cascades of centrifuges to do this because it's only .72%, so each stage gets you just a wee bit more enriched. You do this over and over and over again until you get to higher enrichment. Once you have HEU enriching further is very easy for the same reason that it was hard when it was unenriched: now the stuff you don't want (U-238) is much less. To get from 80% HEU to 96% is trivial using the same centrifuge cascades, and how long it takes really depends on a) how much 80% HEU you have, and b) how much 96% HEU you want. If you have 100lbs of 80% HEU then to get to 10lbs of 96% HEU might really only take weeks if not less when it might have taken years to get from .72% to 80%. | | |
| ▲ | gh02t 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yep, https://web.mit.edu/22.812j/www/enrichment.pdf is a good starting point if anybody wants to learn more about the economics/logistics of enrichment. Though, it's a notoriously confusing topic so it could take some reading. Tl;dr is that the amount of energy required to separate a mixture of gasses (U238 waste and U235 product) is roughly proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of the U238 percentage and the U235 percentage. So as your feed stream becomes more enriched in U235, it becomes much easier to do subsequent separations. This log relationship is an approximation, but arises out of the statistical mechanics of separating two mixed gasses and the resulting decrease in entropy. Edit: a key point most people I'm guessing aren't aware of: centrifuges don't really care what you feed them, whether the feed is natural or 20% or 89% enriched, they just get increasingly more efficient so that a single "pass" through them produces a greater amount of separation as the feed stock becomes more enriched. They do a fixed amount of "separative work" each pass. The same machines can be used to enrich from natural to 20% as 20%-90% (with some relatively minor caveats), and in fact it takes far fewer machines to do the 20-90 step at the same rate as natural-20. |
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| ▲ | perihelions 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You know how Shannon entropy works in CS, compression and stuff? Atoms work the same way: their mixing entropy is that same x*ln(x) sum which is an extremely steep function near its boundaries. That's your non-linearity. That statistical entropy corresponds to macroscopic thermodynamic properties, enthalpy and work. The starting uranium atom ratios, 0.7%/99.3%, are a very unbalanced mixture deep into that non-linearity side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing (The other half of it is that, as you progressively enrich, you start to discard the "depleted" part of the mass flow, and work only with the, gradually smaller, "enriched" mass flow). |
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| ▲ | neves 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Remember that Israel had more nuclear bombs than China and never signed any international as tmy treaty. |
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| ▲ | hollerith 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | China is estimated to have approximately 600 nuclear warheads. China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal and is projected to reach at least 1,000 operational warheads by 2030. Israel is widely believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads. | |
| ▲ | invalidname 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel never acknowledged that. It is claimed that the US president at the time demanded that Israel kept this a secret to avoid embarrassment to the US. Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that. | | |
| ▲ | Narretz 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it. | | |
| ▲ | im3w1l 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They absolutely do talk about it. Maybe you should ask yourself why you never heard about it though. | |
| ▲ | invalidname 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it. That's clever. Virtue signaling 101. And when things turn worse you can pat yourself on the back claiming that your virtue was intact and you were on the "right side of history". You can pretend that none of the violence is related to the side you chose. The fact is that western ignorance is deeply at fault for the violence in Gaza. Probably more so than many others. Why? There are three sides to this conflict: * Moderate people - these are moderate Israelis and Palestinians. These are by far the majority. They might not agree on all the details or even on a Palestinian state, but they don't want violence and will try to avoid it when possible. * Zero sum players - e.g. Hamas and Israelis who commit crimes e.g. deep settlements, war crimes etc. Some of them are sadly even in the Israeli government now. They've gained strength in Israel thanks to Hamas violence and vice versa. They feed each other. For every Hamas terrorist plot, the Israeli extremists build their base further and commit their own atrocities which result in Hamas gaining traction. * Chaos actors - This is where Iran is. Some chaos actors don't care who wins and in some cases they choose a side. This is also where you reside. It is not a good place to be in. Now you might have the knee jerk reaction. You think you're one of the "good guys", but you're not. You picked a side and you throw the blame on Israel while ignoring the legitimate facts Israel has in waging war against a zero-sum player (Hamas). By blaming Israel for the destruction in Gaza you essentially tell Hamas: no harm no foul. Hamas hears you loud and clear. They can sacrifice all the Palestinian lives, starve them, use children and civilians as cannon fodder. As far as many in the west are concerned, Israel is the only one to blame. That removes their incentive to surrender and encourages them to escalate the violence. The way they see it is that this encourages hostility which will keep the war going forever. They think that it will create a situation in which Israel will lose western support and will collapse as a result. The problem with this logic is that if Israel loses western support it will likely shift to the extreme right-wing and in that situation the Palestinians would be in serious trouble. Want proof? Go to a pro-Palestine rally carrying both a Palestinian flag and an Israeli flag to support co-existence which is supposed to be their goal. It isn't. Try wearing a yellow ribbon in such a rally to encourage the return of innocent civilians from Gaza. Same thing. These are not pro-Palestine rallies, they are anti-Israel rallies. Is it any surprise that Israel is becoming more extreme? |
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| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that. Calling for it and being actually able to do it are two very different things. It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to. | | |
| ▲ | invalidname 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | So based on your logic we should just let them gain that ability and see what happens? > It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to. Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all. It's amazing to me how people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to people who literally led terrorist attacks against their country. To people who would stone gay people and punish women for the crime of rape. But won't give a similar benefit of doubt to the people opposing them. Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all. I'm going to play a childish game with you: who started it first? > Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth. Are you saying people on the internet lie? | | |
| ▲ | invalidname 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I'm going to play a childish game with you: who started it first? You can say that the CIA. Not Israel. But again that's a child's game just like you said. How many Jews conducted suicide bombings in Germany after the holocaust? We moved on, I can't say forgive and forget but we go to Germany and Austria. We talk and we live. > Are you saying people on the internet lie? Yep. And exaggerate and simplify the wrong things. |
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| ▲ | rudedogg 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > earthquake bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term |
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| ▲ | arandomusername 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Iran is prone to earthquakes, would an earthquake bomb do more damage than that? Even if it just damages the centrifuges, as far as I see it, it would just delay their enrichment process, severely less than total destruction of their underground base. |
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| ▲ | ggm 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes that's basically my point. They recalibrate, tighten the pipes, and flush the contamination back out of the chain. 6 to 8 weeks/days/whatever later it's back in cycle. | | |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion. Centrifuges. They got them via the A. Q. Khan network. We learned about if circa 2005 from Qaddaffi who gave up his to secure peace and his safety (and it didn't turn out well for him because Obama did not respect the gentleman's deal Qaddaffi had with Bush). |