Considering Israel and the US are bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities because they have “weapons of mass destruction”, if Iran really did have such weapons, wouldn’t bombing the facilities they’re held in cause them to explode, or cause an evident ripple at least? I may be imagining this in a way cartoonier way than military weapons actually work, but I’m preparing myself for some incredibly annoying debates.
Nope. Exploding a nuclear bomb/warhead is a complicated and fickely thing. Everything must happen in the right speed and order, or it will be a dud. It will be a radioactive thing, yes, and might spread some seriously bad stuff around, but thats “just” some radioactive stuff in a few ten meters radius instead of blowing up a city.
Nukes are actually extremely hard to set off. H-bombs even moreso. It requires extremely, extremely precise explosively-driven compression.
Gun-type firing mechanisms are simpler, but by no means “simple”.
Some nuclear bombs are so hard to make explode that they need another nuclear bomb to ignite them.
Nuclear bombs are not like conventional bombs. It is very difficult to make them explode. They aren’t volatile. The way the ones dropped on Japan detonated was something like two halves of a core hit each other super super hard and were propelled by a bunch of shot gun shells. Compare that to things like black powder where it’s just fire.
I don’t think fires or bombs on nuclear sites are good, nor do I necessarily believe there were nuclear weapons, but I don’t think they’d detonate like what you’re thinking. Like how a fire at a fireworks factory causes a horrible chain reaction where everything blows up. Nothing like that.
Nah I stuck a screwdriver in there, it’s fine
Uh oh spaghetti-o’s
Cherenkov radiation blue light INTENSIFIES
No. That’s not how it works. It could spread nuclear material though.
Edit: if it existed where they’re claiming, which it doesn’t.
Pretty much the only people who claim it doesn’t exist is Iran. The only reason the UN can’t verify is because anytime they do surprise inspections they aren’t allowed into the facilities. No need to bury your refinement facilities 300 feet underground if you are making energy grade nuclear materials.
No need to bury your refinement facilities 300 feet underground
Unless your neighbors are crazy enough to try and bomb them.
Yes, one day for no reason at all Israel decided to blow up Irans secret nuclear facilities.
“one day”
Israel has been threatening since the 90s.
Iran has been threatening sine 79 for some reason, wonder what happened and if a certain ideology took over Iran?
So then you agree that it makes sense for them to build the sites very deep even if they had no intent of making nukes. Became their neighbors are likely to try and blow it up.
Glad we settled that
Trumps own head of intelligence says they’re years away.
Wow weird Bibi’s been saying they’re six months away since….1995
It’s funny how quickly democrats turned on Tulsi saying she was a Russian plant back in 2016 and now that she continues to spew Russian propaganda supporting Iran everyone is acting like she is the bastion of truth.
Is everyone democrats in this observation?
I’m neither, for the recordAnd I neither said, nor acted like, she was telling the truth. Mearly pointing out that Rump is ignoring his own “intelligence”.
Well, she now claims that that’s not what she said.
Because she wants to keep her job.
Because she was always a grifter.
Russian asset like her buddy Trump
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They are bombing precisely because they haven’t got any weapons. If they had weapons, their nuclear weapons programme wouldn’t be attacked. This is how N Korea gets away with its shit. The attack is because they almost have nuclear weapons, and is intended to ensure the programme doesn’t bear fruit.
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Nuclear weapons need a very precisely placed and timed set of shaped explosions within the device in order to ram the material together in such a way as to achieve fission. Nuclear weapons cannot be detonated by exterior explosions, fire, earthquake, hurricane or anything else other than its own detonation system.
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You can explode a nuclear bomb by activating the firing mechanism. This will make the mushroom cloud. If you blow something up NEXT to a nuclear bomb, you can scatter the bomb components and create a dirty bomb, which is just a regular explosion plus SOME radiation.
A nuclear bomb requires precise explosions delivered by shaped charges to achieve fission. You could strap C4 to the sides of a nuke and set them off, and you probably wouldn’t create a nuclear explosion. It’s a very delicate kind of weapon with very sophisticated engineering.
And even “precise” would be understating it. Not only is a specific shape of the detonation required, but timing is crucial too. Otherwise you’ll end up with a fizzle.
But yes, the main concern is nuclear contamination in the target area.
Well, as sophisticated as it got in the 1940s
Newer devices have been designed and made in the decades since.
Are cars more sophisticated today then they were in the 1940s?Yeah, but because of nonproliferation, I don’t think we were making any new ones and haven’t been designing them for quite some time
not sure if anything more than hydrogen bombs are needed. Next would be like matter antimatter.
We don’t know how sophisticated Iranian devices might be.
Well, if they existed and didn’t use precise detonation, they wouldn’t work.
Or if they have any completed at all.
We know they have none, otherwise the strike wouldn’t have been possible.
Well, they’re working with China, so probably more sophisticated than ours at this point. Designs anyway, maybe not having any functional.
No they won’t
Nukes are extremely hard to build and ensure they can explode. You’re talking extremely precisely timed explosives that with even a mili second off, will make your heavy nuke turn into a dud. Throwing a bomb right on top of one will not make it go off.
What CAN happen is that an explosion like that ruptures the nuke had throws the fissile material around, effectively making your nuke a dirty bomb.
Also, since they’ve been bombing nuclear facilities I can guarantee you that they have boat loads of very shitty (radioactive) chemicals laying around there which with these bombings now will also be spread around everywhere
Excellent response.
I’m just commenting to say that they’ve determined that there is no rise in radiation around the sites they struck, so either there was no radioactive material stored there, or they didn’t impact the sites as badly as they are claiming. If there was radioactive material, it remained contained. They may still have to rebuild their facilities, but they still have the most important element, the uranium.
Also, since they’ve been bombing nuclear facilities I can guarantee you that they have boat loads of very shitty (radioactive) chemicals laying around there which with these bombings now will also be spread around everywhere
So far no radiation was detected, so perhaps it was stored more securely (or somewhere else).
Even more concerning. This indicates that either:
1.: The radioactive material hasn‘t been destroyed
2.: Israel & USA completely made up Iran‘s nuclear capabilities
3.: Nuclear warheads have already been made and transported. Unlikely but nothing to joke about.
Third is not highly probably, because definitely sites were monitored much earlier than the strikes themselves. Especially after Iran lost air superiority
Any suspicious activity would be noticed
Nuclear bombs are extremely stable when not armed. If you blow one up with external explosives it will just break.
I do wonder though, if they had enough uranium to make a few nukes and it just got all exploded, wouldn’t there still be some fallout/spread over time?
Inside a bunker?300 meter underground?
That’s how dirty bombs work - an explosion deliberately blasts radioactive material in as wide an area as it can.
Yes, that’s one of the primary concerns. The nuclear material isn’t likely to actually explode, but the material can easily get spread by an explosion. Essentially turning a bunker buster bomb into a giant dirty bomb.
I would presume so, yes.
Nuclear weapons require extremely specific events to successfully detonate, blowing them up with explosives will destroy the mechanisms that make it possible. It will most likely spread the nuclear fuel out though by breaking the shielding and structure that was keeping the radioactive material on the inside.
It doesn’t work that way bro
Reminder that the US accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on itself but since it wasn’t armed it didn’t explode.
But also the most qualified nuclear inspectors on the planet say Iran doesn’t have nukes.
It’s not one, its several
https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/broken-arrows/index.html
