Iran's Smart Concrete: Is Our Hammer Big Enough?

[BSB]

Mar 3rd 2012 | from the print edition
 
A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology.

http://www.economist.com/node/21548918

[kimba1]

Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. The DTRA has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of metres of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs.

this was my first thought reading half way through.

[kimba1]

Is using the bomb to expose the bunker then seal it afterwards a bad idea?

[Plane]

  That would work to halt the program , but the cleanup would be atrocious.

   Iran thinks of itself as a large nation , we think of them as a fraction of a small region.

  In terms of Atomic wepons we are right, if more than a very few atomic wepons are ever used the region will have to be evacuated for a cupple decades , it won't even matter on whose territory the blasts occur, the prevailing winds will matter more than where the borders are drawn.

    Is the movie "the Day After" availible to them?> It had a profound effect here.

     I wonder if enough bombs to defeat Isreal would not make Mecca uninhabitable?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Iran is the 18th largest country, out of some 200 on Earth. It has more population than any Middle Eastern nation other than Egypt. Iran is a middle sized to large  nation by world standards, both in area and population.

Perhaps a nuke could make Mecca uninhabitable, but Mecca is not in Iran, and Saudi Arabia is not threatening anyone even with talk about nukes of destroying Israel.

The US could probably make no mistake stupider than to drop nukes on any other nation, especially in defense of Israel.

[kimba1]

No!!!
I meant a bunker buster to expose the bunker then seal all the entrance. But i believe a nuke will just make more trouble.

[Plane]

No!!!
I meant a bunker buster to expose the bunker then seal all the entrance. But i believe a nuke will just make more trouble.

I know that you ment that.

But I mean that it would make a nuclear mess.

So would the use of a few bombs.

It doesn't matter that Iran is large , what matters is that Iran is downwind .

[kimba1]

Maybe not
What little I knw about nukes is that more likely what ever fissionable material would simply get dispersed by the explosion to the point of very little harm to people. It's the very reason we don't see many dirty bombs ever. The theory sounds very easy to make, but the practice is alot more complcated.

Too high of an explosive will render the radiation harmless,too much the material will kill anyone trying to activate it.

[Xavier_Onassis]

We do not see any bombs, ever. Hiroshima was not a safe place to be for a goodly amount of time. They closed the Trinity site to tourists long ago. They have evacuated Chernobyl and the Japanese reactor sites, and no one proposes bombing them to disperse the radiation.

Bombing Ira would be very stupid. Nuking Iran would be stupid squared. Even if it were "safe" to nuke Iran, all the press would be against it, and us, for a very, very long time.

Nuclear weapons render places unliveable, if not in reality, in everyone's imagination.

[kimba1]

I`m not talking about a nuclear explosion, I`m talking about ultra high yield explosion to nuclear materials. It`s actually very difficult to get a chain reaction. Any of can say we can make a nuke,but more likely it`ll be a dirty bomb which unknownn outcome.

that kid movie about making a nuke would more likely in reality end with him dying with radiation poisoning.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Okay, I see what you mean.

The problem with destroying Iran's ostensible nuclear bomb program is that it would rally the Iranian people around the creation of a bomb even more. Did taking out the WTC cause Americans to clamor for American banks and businesses to get out of the Middle East? It did the opposite.

[Plane]

A conventional blast that sprays radioactive material over a wide area would be a dirty bomb.

Blowing up a uranium refining plant would noit likly produce an atomic blast , but it would still spoil the land all around and far downwind.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Using any sort of nuke is really bad from two standpoints: (1) the actual physical damage done, and (2) the psychological damage done to public opinion of the nation that set off the bomb.

Also, when Japanese marry, the bride and groom's family do a genealogical test. No one seems to want Burakumin (the Eta caste), Yakuza, Koreans, Manchurians or Chinese in the family as a rule. Now people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also seen as inferior wedding partners, as they might have mutant genes.

[Plane]

, and (2) the psychological damage done to public opinion of the nation that set off the bomb.

This is why the USA became the most contrite and humble of all nations in 1946.

[kimba1]

this all depends on how much material we`re talking about. as i stated before a dirty bomb is not as exactly as easy to make as people think.