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Israel launches attack on Iran | US bombs Iran nuke sites

Zoo_View said:
I know nothing about enriching nuclear material.

I’m curious what happens after Israel or the US (or others) “destroys” an enrichment facility. I’m pretty certain the uranium and/or plutonium isn’t destroyed. It’s the ability to process and enrich the materials that is damaged or destroyed.

So, we have a damaged/destroyed facility housing uranium/plutonium and possibly other highly radioactive materials.

Who guards these facilities?

How difficult is it to take/steal highly radioactive materials from one of these sites and build a dirty bomb?
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There are a lot of obstacles. I've actually been studying some of this stuff for my literary project so the material is fresh in mind.

1. First, you don't want plutonium for a dirty bomb, for two reasons: first, in a non-fission reaction it's only an alpha emitter. Alpha radiation is much, much less energetic and harmful than gamma radiation. The plutonium itself has a long half life. That's why we can have missiles sit around for 30 years and still be ready to go. So the amount of radiation that would produced by a dirty bomb's worth of plutonium would not be that large.

Second, for any damage to be truly widespread, the radioactive material has to disperse. I doubt plutonium is good for that. It's a very heavy metal. So let's say a plutonium dirty bomb exploded on Wall Street. I have my doubts that the fallout would extend beyond Canal Street or Houston Street. And people in the Wall Street area could be evacuated without taking too much radiation. Now, Lower Manhattan would have to be shut down for a while while the stuff is cleaned up, so it would be impactful economically, but the death toll would probably be modest.

Which is, ironically, why Iran might try that approach. It's like a big escalation without being a turn-your-country-into-glass level escalation. BUT:

2. It's not so benign that you could just sit down at a table for a few hours and make a dirty bomb. You'd probably die. So the dirty bomb assemblers would need to have equipment and training. The most likely dirty bomb builders would be the scientists currently working on the nuke. And that's definitely something Iran could do and then pass it to a proxy -- but dirty bombs are hard to smuggle because they set off Geiger counters.

I'm not sure the risk-reward equation works in Iran's favor on this, but again maybe they think they could escalate enough to avoid the worst repercussions?

I don't think a group of terrorists could pull it off without a lot of support.

3. The real worry, in my view, wouldn't be the uranium (mostly harmless) or the plutonium, but the by-products like Cesium-137. Cesium is the best material for a dirty bomb because it has a relatively short half life (30 years) that is still long enough to stick around for a long time. It also emits gamma radiation, it can be powdered (important for spreading aerosols), and it's not too heavy so it would stay airborne longer I think.

I don't know if there would be cesium in those facilities. Cesium is plentiful in spent nuclear fuel rods. Iran is masking its nuclear program under its civilian nuclear program. So there's cesium 137 in Iran, 100%, and probably a lot of it. No idea if it's in these facilities though.
 
HandsonFire said:
I really don’t want boots on the ground or an occupation , but I feel the only answer to your question is invasion/inspection of all Iranian nuclear sites/labs/facilities/ etc. To just drop a bomb on it and let it cave in on itself, you don’t really know what was there, if it’s still there, or if it got moved sold given to someone else. So if it must be done do it, but when it’s over get the hell out and let the Iranian people figure out their own government. Problem with this view is, if Israel/US isn’t influencing them Russia China or someone else is . In a perfect world Iranians would be in a vaccum to figure it out, but wish in one hand..
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I'm guessing nuclear scientists know exactly what is there in the enrichment facilities. Nuclear reactions are pretty well mapped out. There isn't much mystery. It's not as if anyone can invent new reactions.

And from a dirty bomb perspective, I don't know if there would be anything there that would be helpful. You can see my post above, but I don't think dirty bombs want uranium or plutonium. Not being a dirty bomb maker, I don't know that for sure, but the properties one would want out of a "dirty" material just don't line up with the heavy metals in the enrichment facilities.

A bigger risk would be that someone might steal some of the almost enriched plutonium and then finish enriching it. Pakistan, for instance, has nukes but I'm not sure we know how many, and I'm not sure they are really capable of producing more. But if they grab some of the plutonium, might they be able to make a couple more?

It's also worth pointing out that this is all advanced technology. The average Islamic terrorist has no training in nuclear physics. They would need scientists with them, scientists not making the best terrorists for a number of reasons.
 
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TarSpiel said:
So would I, but I agree that attacking Iran directly greatly increases the odds of them (or one of their proxies) attacking us directly.
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Attacking them directly, which would be done to ensure Fordow is destroyed, eliminates the possibility of Iran doing any real damage to us, even if they wanted to.
 
wmheel1287 said:
For precisely this reason...being involved in every aspect of the region when we have no business being such. Leave those people alone...and that includes Israel.

Not our circus and not our monkeys.
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We have business. The business is preventing Iran from acquiring nukes that could be used against us.
 
ZenMode said:
Attacking them directly, which would be done to ensure Fordow is destroyed, eliminates the possibility of Iran doing any real damage to us, even if they wanted to.
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It depends what you mean by "real damage," and in any case, it doesn't "eliminate" anything permanently.

It's an extremely dumb idea for us to get involved. If Bibi wants to put his country at risk, let him do it. It would be just as dumb, but at least we wouldn't have to be involved.
 
ZenMode said:
We have business. The business is preventing Iran from acquiring nukes that could be used against us.
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So does that mean other countries have the right to attack us for weapons development? Im just trying to figure out the logic here.

Perhaps (and im just spitballing here), the main reason Iran wants a nuke is to prevent being at the whim of Israel and the US who have been the real aggressors in the ME for at least the last 35 years.
 
superrific said:
So let's say a plutonium dirty bomb exploded on Wall Street. I have my doubts that the fallout would extend beyond Canal Street or Houston Street. And people in the Wall Street area could be evacuated without taking too much radiation. Now, Lower Manhattan would have to be shut down for a while while the stuff is cleaned up, so it would be impactful economically, but the death toll would probably be modest.

Which is, ironically, why Iran might try that approach. It's like a big escalation without being a turn-your-country-into-glass level escalation.
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If Iran or its proxies set off any type of nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan it would definitely be a turn your country into glass level of escalation, regardless of the death toll...
 
hedge said:
If Iran or its proxies set off any type of nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan it would definitely be a turn your country into glass level of escalation, regardless of the death toll...
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Well maybe Lower Manhattan wouldn't be the right target. Or maybe I'm just full of shit about this. It seems plausible that the reaction to a dirty bomb would be less than the reaction to a nuke (if for no other reason than to disincentivize nuke production), but plausible isn't the same as true.
 
wmheel1287 said:
So does that mean other countries have the right to attack us for weapons development? Im just trying to figure out the logic here.

Perhaps (and im just spitballing here), the main reason Iran wants a nuke is to prevent being at the whim of Israel and the US who have been the real aggressors in the ME for at least the last 35 years.
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The invasion of Iraq told every country everywhere, get a nuke or die. Following the rules doesn't protect you. Nukes protect you. Iran is getting bombed and nobody dares go near North Korea.
 
My understanding is that the diminution of Iranian air defenses makes success highly probable, but that could be military happy talk.

There has been talk of Israel mounting a commando raid on Fordow, but I don't know how realistic that is, especially now that they wouldn't have the element of surprise/
 
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