Since there’s no evidence that they’re now working on a bomb at all, it could be either. However the consensus back in the mid 90’s was that Iraq was working on an A bomb. That makes sense because most H bomb designs require an A bomb to act as a trigger.
No OP.
Okay, I would day the Bomb Iraq is working on is a simple fission device.
A Hydrogen Bomb is by nature one big sucker…nothing but a full sized bomber airplane or full sized ICBM could deliver it. A modern A Bomb can be delivered via more conventional vehicles, such as a MIG Fighter or a SCUD.
The statements are, that they are refining the more fissionable isotopes out of the regular stuff (sorry, I forget U-235 vs U-238 etc). That would be A-bombs, they are lower tech than hydrogen bombs.
Lowest tech is dirty bombs. You take any uranium, set it on top of a fertilizer bomb, and blow it up so the area is polluted with radioactive heavy-metal particles. Besides the actual casualties, everyone panics and leaves and property values tank besides.
If Saddam wanted to, he could have been shipping in one such bomb per American city over the last five years. Then he can do what he wants, blow them up one per day or all at once, or write us a letter, “Guess what I will do if you don’t obey my orders.”
Bet he wishes he had thought of that.
In the OP I stated that the title states it all incase the hamster gets hungry - but I did add that if you don’t believe Iraq is working on the bomb don’t even bother to post - you are beyond hope.
A dirty bomb doesn’t even be uranium. It could be anything radioactive, and no matter how good the embargo may be, I don’t realistically think that we can keep Saddam away from all conceivable radioactives. But a dirty bomb is basically harmless: The worst possible effect it can have is to cause a panic, and some relatively minor (as war goes) cleanup costs.
A fission bomb is definitely easier to make than a fusion bomb, since every fusion bomb needs one or more fission bombs to trigger it. So the first thing he makes (if anything) will be a fission bomb.
But once you have fission bombs, it’s a relatively small step to produce fusion bombs. Unlike fission bombs which require special isotopes of uranium or plutonium (difficult to produce or obtain), the reactive material in fusion bombs can be obtained from water, or produced fairly easily in accelerators. So fusion literally gives you more bang for your buck: For perhaps a factor of ten more in materials, you get a factor of a thousand or more in increased yield.
That’s sounds mighty preachy from a guy who isn’t even sure whether it’s A-bombs or H-bombs that he’s got faith in. If you had done a search before asking, you might have found that your question was already addressed in these two threads:
Iraq: What’s the Evidence?
Isn’t getting weapons grade material the HARD part?
The later even has a nice link to a site on the status of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program which includes a schematic for Saddam’s A-Bomb.
There is absolutely no question that Iraq is trying to develop an atomic bomb and has been for more than 20 years (they built a nuclear power plant to that end and thankfully Israel destroyed it before it was completed.) What possible reason would they have to NOT build one?
As far as fission or fusion is concerned, I can guarantee you that the first IND (independent nuclear device) that goes off will be fission (unless its an old, stolen/bought Soviet thermo-warhead). Whoever makes a workable fission bomb isn’t going to bother trying to make it an H bomb. They aren’t going to be concerned with being the biggest, just being the first.
And turning a fission device into an H bomb is not an easy thing to do. You can’t just put some hydrogen next to the fission core and set it off. It doesn’t work that way.
I’m not sure how difficult it would be to make a H bomb once you have a working A bomb, but since you need a fission bomb to make an H bomb, it’s sort of moot. (Come to think of it, once you have an H bomb you can clad it in U-238 to give it extra kick since the u-238 will break apart under the intense energy of the h bomb, a “fission-fusion-fission” bomb, and i dont know how hard that extra step is, either.)
The one thing we know is, the MAIN problem for them is the refining and procurement process: working on bomb technology is a minor detail. Once you have enough U-235, anyone (i.e. most of us here, given enough internet research,) could make an A-bomb. The question is, when will his procurement “catch up” with his technology (going the other way on the scale of course)
Just to make a point clearer: Dirty bombs don’t need any kind of fissile material at all, they simply need radioactive material. In fact, it would be best not to use fissile material.
[ul]
[li]Radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid and causes thyroid cancer (assuming you don’t get enough to suffer radiation sickness). This is a nontrivial medical risk, though it is survivable.[/li]
The general population is already aware of this, and the sales of iodine pills (saturate your body with stable iodine to prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine) have risen. Such pills only help in this instance, however.
[li]Radioactive cobalt (Co-60) has a half-life of five years. That is long enough to stick around for nontrivial amounts of time and travel significant distances in the wind (weather systems travel around the world in an average of five days), groundwater, or various contaminated items, but short enough to be dangerously radioactive. In fact, cobalt bombs are jacketed with stable cobalt (Co-59) simply to seed the atmosphere with sufficient Co-60 to create major fallout problems. Cobalt bombs are commonly considered ‘doomsday devices’ because of the massive fallout risks Co-60 poses.[/li]
So far as I know, there is no credible defense against a significant Co-60 release. This has the potential to render major metropolitan areas uninhabitable and/or contaminate major water sources to the point of unusability.
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I do not know if cobalt or iodine are controlled substances. I don’t even think they could logically be controlled, given how many items use cobalt or iodine as a part of their chemical structure. Iodized salt is a common example of a potentally dangerous item in this context.
The inestimable Carey Sublette does a better job of describing the hows and whys of cobalt fallout than I do. – I did not describe cobalt bombs, however: I described the effects of a Co-60 dirty bomb, which is the functional equivalent to the fallout produced by a cobalt bomb. Simply remove the fission device’s blast (replacing a fertilizer bomb’s blast) and the immediate radiation effects and you’ll have a good idea of what
I’m talking about.
Sweet dreams.