Saddumb's weapons of mass destruction

It was moved, under IAEC permit, to an undisclosed location for disposal.

 

The Hiroshima bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was a 13 kiloton uranium (U235) device. Fat Man, the Nagasaki bomb, was a 20 kiloton plutonium (U239) device.

The so-called "suitcase bomb" on the web page says it would be a 10-20 ton device. Unfortunately it fails to says 10-20 tons of what. The usual means of measuring nuclear explosions is to compare them to how many tons of TNT it would take to produce the same explosion. If the "suitcase bomb" is equivalent to 10-20 tons of TNT then, taking the middle figure of 15 tons of TNT, it would be less than 1/1000th the size of the Hiroshima bobm. Around 0.00115384615 of the Hiroshima bomb, and about half of that, or about 0.00075 of the Nagasaki device.

But the thing to look at is the fissile material used. The article says "plutonium (or U-233)." Neither plutonium nor uranium 233 occurs naturally. Both are manufactured products. And the machine necessary to manufacture then is nothing less than a special type of nuclear reactor known as a "breeder reactor." In the case of plutonium, the liquid metal (sodium) moderated reactor vessel would be lined with uranium 238, which is non-fissile. The U238 would capture neutrons which would "breed" the U238 into plutonium 239 (P239) which is fissile. In the case of uranium 233 (U233) the breeder reactor vessel would be lined with Thorium 232 (Th232) which, through neutron capture, would be bred into uranium 233 (U233) which is fissile.

And that is just the beginning. Milling and shaping the two piece core and devising a way to bring them together to achieve critical mass without blowing the two pieces of the shaped charge apart again and stopping the full power of the energy conversion is extremely difficult and demanding. Milling that fissile metal requires finer workmanship than grinding eyeglass lenses. Not something a terrorist hiding in a cave is likely to be able to do.

As I said earlier, the means to produce such a bomb requires a very well developed infrastructure, a nuclear reactor being, arguably, one of the most sophisticated machines every built by man.

It is highly unlikely a terrorist, hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, would have access to such a level of technology.

 

It was reported in the NY Times (buried in the back, of course) when the report was released in May, 2004. The "talking heads" of the major broadcast media were strangely silent about it. Almost as if they had an anti-Bush agenda, but we know that is impossible, don't we?

 

Maybe, but more likely not. Saddam could not have built sufficient nuclear devices to do more than be a nuisance threat. (Taking into account that the nuclear bombing of even one city is a terrible tragedy, but he would not have been able to do more.)

And, had he done so, he probably knew one of the nuclear powers would have turned Baghdad into a glass lined kitty litter box!

In my opinion Nukes were never the WMD issue. Chemical and biological weapons were much more dangerous to us here in the US. And even then, the main reason I supported the war was simply to get rid of a madman who had forced a reign of terror on Iraq for over 20 years, murdering untold numbers of his own people, and devising the most horrible tortures known to man. He had to go. He went. Good riddance.

 

I don't know. I don't watch Fox. I like my news "fair and balanced."

Just who is "the United States?" It was reported. Then it was buried. What else is new?

They did. The media chose to ignore it.