Easier just to do a conventional detonation in place. Let the 60% uranium flow together and reach at or near critical mass. A Chernobyl-like event 500 feet underground would leave even the unreacted enriched Uranium unrecoverable for - one hell of a long time. There have been mishaps like this on a smaller scale in Plutonium manufacture, where through accident or stupidity plutonium nitrate solutions have been allowed to form a critical shape. The cleanup is long, expensive, and the mixed reaction products cheaper to just bury for a few millennia and start over rather than even attempt a hazardous separation process. We don’t actually need their enriched Uranium if we can just see that they don’t get it for a few thousand years.

 

The idea that anyone would consider a nuke in this conflict is absolutely amazing. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. The international fallout from using a nuclear weapon would be even more catastrophic than our current foreign policy has been. We would become a pariah overnight and the economic and security fallout would be immeasurable compared to anything we’ve ever experienced. Anyone who floats that idea as viable is so shortsighted, i can only imagine they are a foreign agent

 

Sort of.

The likely utility of such a strike would be to bury it deep in such a manner that would require protective gear and special handling to dig it all out again. Harder for IR, but not impossible by any means, and not worth the inevitable geopolitical blowback (wouldn't go over well at home either).

Possible if the material was stored shallow enough that you could scatter it to the winds, making recovery essentially impossible. Or could do that with multiple strikes, keep digging until you get to the chewy center basically. But now you've created even more fallout, and bathing enriched U in neutron flux from a weapon would tend to warm it up a bit . Bad news for whoever is downwind.

Chernobyl is not relevant to this discussion at all.

1) Yes Chernobyl experienced a (relatively small) bomb-like event in the core (prompt super criticality). This blew the core apart and scattered the contents outside containment.

2) But the reactor core itself was already a very hot pile of isotopes (due to lengthy production operation), and more massive than any bomb core by orders of magnitude. I don't think even a big bomb that neutron-irradiated a pile of enriched U would cause that big of a mess. RBMK was (is actually) a monumentally bad design.

 

It's ridiculous and won't happen. But the regime in IR may not *know* that to any degree of confidence, so I wouldn't rule out leaked hints intended to put the fear of Allah in them.

We have the means to just go in and retrieve the stuff the hard way (easier now with air dominance). That's what I'd expect if it gets to that point.

 

My perspectives on geopolitics are actually pretty nuanced.

Just in this particular case the facts are black and white.

1) Don't operate airliners into a hot conflict, especially ...

1) A conflict YOU started.
2) The airlines are launching out of YOUR primary military base that YOU are using to support YOUR attacks. What could possibly go wrong

The spin doctors then latch onto some USN lessons learned to try to flip the script and make the good guys the bad guys. Regime didn't give a rats arse about those people, and were probably hoping something like this would happen.

No Sympathy.


Worth noting that you can contrast Vincennes with the Cole. I'd say the Vincennes CO navigated the grey area better than the Cole CO. One came home with all his people.

 

Well, we assassinated the ayatollah and killed scores more in their govt. And unlike what you thought, the people of Iran don’t line up for a regime change. Turns out, they actually would rather have their ayatollah and IRGC over being bombed by the U.S. and Israel. Shocked, who knew? (Answer: Everyone outside of the U.S. and Israel)

Whats a terrorist simp? Is that what you call anyone who calls out this BS war?




By that definition, United States is in the top 3. Israel has also funded Hamas in the past. Hell most of the equipment of Taliban today in Afghanistan is US made and left behind. And we are funding the Taliban govt in Afghanistan.

 

Ironic. The Iranians were bombed on their homeland. We just got fat and dumb in that meantime. Who do you think has the stronger will? Iranians will last longer than the average public John Doe. We are just about to enter the FO stage of FAing. You as a major airline Capt are insulated to pricing of goods and services. But the average American family that can’t even cover a $500 emergency, they are in trouble. I hope you (and they) have exactly the day they voted for.

 

Do you have a terrorist love wall?

 

Uhh, it's literally the day you voted for as well.

 

I like having 1 thread that is more open to the political side of things that definitly impact airlines and pilot jobs as opposed to it garbaging up numeros threads.

I like people that come on with insight ,facts and opinions.

I am less enthused with posts that are only opinions.

I loath posts that are one sided "hit piece" opinions with no substance.