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johnea 3 hours ago

If we didn't have a lunatic in the whitehouse, I'm sure we could negotiate with Iran.

With Texas, I'm not so sure...

Private enterprise enriching uranium is a seriously worrying development...

maxall4 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m no expert, but I don’t believe that “high-assay low-enriched uranium” is the sort you can use in nuclear weapons, per it being “low-enriched”. According to the DOE, HALEU only goes up to 20% enrichment [0]. Nuclear weapons, it seems, need it to be enriched beyond 20% [1]

[0] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-high-assay-low-enric... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium

NewJazz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Dirty bombs

comicjk 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Uranium-235 isn't useful for dirty bombs: it's too long-lived and not radioactive enough. Making dangerous levels of radiation requires short-lived isotopes. Some of these are the products of uranium fission, which is why spent uranium fuel is a radiation hazard. But isolating U-235 just to fission it to get radioactive isotopes like cesium-137 would not be the easiest way to get them.

lightedman 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Uranium-235 isn't useful for dirty bombs"

It is when your goal is to throw a ton of alpha emitters into the environment for the population to ingest. Do you remember your nuclear cookie thought experiment?

ben_w 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Uranium-235 has a half-life of 704 million years.

It emits so slowly that the main hazard is heavy metal poisoning, which you'd also get from the depleted uranium that's a waste product from enrichment.

From the numbers I see on https://www.iaea.org/topics/spent-fuel-management/depleted-u..., if a dirty bomb with 1kg of 100% pure Uranium-235 exploded and evenly deposited a fine dust over a 170 by 170 meter square of typical soil, the total Uranium-235 (and specifically that isotope) of the top meter would only double; the total mass of uranium in that volume would only go up by 0.7%.

  The average concentration of natural uranium in soil is about 2 parts per million, which is equivalent to 2 grams of uranium in 1000 kg of soil. This means that the top metre of soil in a typical 10 m ´ 40 m garden contains about 2 kg of uranium (corresponding to about 50,000,000 Bq of activity just from the decay of the uranium isotopes and ignoring the considerable activity associated with the decay of the progeny. Concentrations of uranium in granite range from 2 parts per million to 20 parts per million. Uranium in higher concentrations (50 - 1000 mg per kg of soil) can be found in soil associated with phosphate deposits. In air, uranium exists as dust. Very small, dust-like particles of uranium in the air are deposited onto surface water, plant surfaces, and soil. These particles of uranium eventually end up back in the soil or in the bottom of lakes, rivers, and ponds, where they mix with the natural uranium that is already there. Typical activity concentrations of uranium in air are around 2 µBq per cubic metre. (UNSCEAR 2000).
- ibid
rotringlvr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

Legend2440 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Private enterprise enriching uranium is a seriously worrying development...

Or seriously exciting. We might actually get affordable, clean nuclear energy this century.

philipkglass 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Urenco USA is a private enterprise that enriches uranium. It built its first American enrichment plant 20 years ago, and lately it has been expanding capacity:

https://urencousa.com/about/our-history

The parent Urenco company has been operating private uranium enrichment plants in Europe since the 1970s.

chasd00 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pantex is outside Amarillo, that's where all the US's nukes come from. If Texas wanted nukes ( well more nukes actually ) they'd juts place an order.

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

porkpieshoe 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Pantex doesn't power a panopticon, nor does it threaten my livelihood.

charliebwrites 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m just waiting for one of these private rocket companies to buy a private nuclear enriching company

We could reach Lex Luther level villainy in no time at all

rotringlvr 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

tmp10423288442 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Iran is essentially finished at this point - they no longer have control over the Strait of Hormuz, and oil is rapidly flowing through the strait (to say nothing of the oil already exported via other pipelines, or the impetus the war gave to accelerate pipelines under construction, such as the Iraq-Turkey pipeline).