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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 rapid

by ggm 1y 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)

arandomusername 1y ago
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.
- ggm 1y ago
  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.
  - firesteelrain 1y ago
    If they can even get back in
gh02t 1y ago
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.
- anonymars 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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.
    - anonymars 1y ago
      I'd say the same could be said for 9/11, which didn't really achieve anything positive for anyone but did make for a large bit of "The US hurt itself in its confusion"
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > 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.
neves 1y ago
Remember that Israel had more nuclear bombs than China and never signed any international as tmy treaty.
- hollerith 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it.
    - invalidname 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - 8note 1y ago
        i think you missed the point. they're saying in fewer words "watch what leaders say, not what they do" iran might be saying a lot, but if it wanted war, it would have been attacking, the same way that israel is attacking gaza, not threatening gaza. even now when iran has responded to israel's attacks, you still seem to care more about iran's threats than iran's missiles. ----- on your very long aside, you are mislabelling the positive sum behaviour as zero-sum. you might see the point in putting at least equal blame between israel and hamas for the conflict with the positive sum descriptor. israel is in a mutually beneficial escalation and continuation of violence with hamas. an extreme right wing populace in israel is a win both for hamas and for israel. neither care about the palestinians, nor the israelis.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> 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".
- dralley 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  The toxicity of the Uranium would be a bigger problem than the radioactivity
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with.
rudedogg 1y ago
> earthquake bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term
- anton-c 1y ago
  Kinda reminds me of how depth charges work
cryptonector 1y ago
> 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).

by ggm 1y ago

arandomusername 1y ago

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.

ggm 1y ago
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.
- firesteelrain 1y ago
  If they can even get back in

gh02t 1y ago

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.

anonymars 1y ago
> 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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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.
  - anonymars 1y ago
    I'd say the same could be said for 9/11, which didn't really achieve anything positive for anyone but did make for a large bit of "The US hurt itself in its confusion"
throwaway2037 1y ago
> 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.

neves 1y ago

Remember that Israel had more nuclear bombs than China and never signed any international as tmy treaty.

hollerith 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it.
  - invalidname 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - 8note 1y ago
      i think you missed the point. they're saying in fewer words "watch what leaders say, not what they do" iran might be saying a lot, but if it wanted war, it would have been attacking, the same way that israel is attacking gaza, not threatening gaza. even now when iran has responded to israel's attacks, you still seem to care more about iran's threats than iran's missiles. ----- on your very long aside, you are mislabelling the positive sum behaviour as zero-sum. you might see the point in putting at least equal blame between israel and hamas for the conflict with the positive sum descriptor. israel is in a mutually beneficial escalation and continuation of violence with hamas. an extreme right wing populace in israel is a win both for hamas and for israel. neither care about the palestinians, nor the israelis.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> 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".

dralley 1y ago
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 1y ago
The toxicity of the Uranium would be a bigger problem than the radioactivity
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with.

rudedogg 1y ago

> earthquake bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term

anton-c 1y ago
Kinda reminds me of how depth charges work

cryptonector 1y ago

> 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).