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Would that make it an excellent stronghold? A force could hold there without fear of bombardment and set up artillery and the like. Makes me wonder if you coul

Would that make it an excellent stronghold? A force could hold there without fear of bombardment and set up artillery and the like. Makes me wonder if you could use something similar in a more portable sense, like a large amount of nuclear waste carried with a company over enemy ground. To be clear, I don't think Russia's doing this, but it's an interesting tactic to think about.

PaulHoule 5y ago
Once nuclear waste has aged for a while the main radiological threats are a few fission products with a half-life around 30 years (Cesium 137 and Strontium 90) and then some transuranics (Plutonium 239) that have half-lifes more like 40,000 years. Thus if somebody dispersed spent fuel in the environment it would not create mass causalities that would kill or injure combatants but instead there would be a concern that it would cause health problems for random individuals over a very long time. I'd compare that to a dirty bomb which is probably not that much deadlier than a plain bomb (if you had material that was dangerously radioactive enough to harm the public the bomb makers would be killed by it) except that people who are near it might suffer psychologically because they imagine they might get lung cancer because they inhaled plutonium particles.