What’s the actual evidence that stuff was moved out of there? Aren’t the photographed “suspicious trucks” the trucks filling in the entrance with dirt as was mentioned above?
I dunno. I keep seeing it mentioned they managed to save a lot of their enriched fuel and maybe even centrifuges (I’d be kinda surprised at saving the centrifuges…they aren’t that small and I doubt that easy to just unplug and carry off and my understanding is there are a hellva lot of them).
But maybe Iran had a contingency plan to pack up and run in just such an occasion.
On TV news I heard that IDF intelligence thinks the Iranians probably do have a handful of small backup centrifuges they kept in reserve for the event that their main facility was destroyed, but nothing like what they had at the main sites.
True, they would know that, but they had a lot in that facility. I mean, the whole point of it was to put their high-value stuff in a place that couldn’t easily be attacked.
I suppose that they also know what the volume of the facility was, and can estimate the degree of cave-in from that and the volume of the craters.
Nobody knows that but Iran, and of course they’re going to say that regardless of whether they did or not.
Feels like a good place to point out that the Manhattan Project cost $2 billion and the B-29 development and production cost $3 billion. Sure, the major nuclear powers have had missile deployable warheads for decades. But it took the US years just to drop one bomb out of a B-29 at massive cost.
The article describes them as “cargo trucks”, not dump trucks.
The total amount of enriched uranium was 400kg, (880lbs). Easily loaded on one or two trucks. Leaving 14 trucks for centrufuges or other equipment.
Let’s see. 19.1 g/cm3, so 19,100 kg/m3, so call it 0.021 cubic meters or about 36 cubic feet. 270 gallons. Could fit it all in three of those big plastic boxes from the hardware store. Or is my math wrong?
Two points:
- The B-29 wasn’t developed for just the Manhattan Project and atomic bomb, it got a lot of use prior to that. So I’m not sure it’s fair to imply all the cost of that bomber should be assigned to the atomic bomb project.
- The Manhattan Project also involved a lot of basic research and the necessary dead-ends of such research.
The result is that anyone developing an atomic bomb now doesn’t have to do basic research, that’s already been done, so it will cost them less, and even in the 1940’s no one was spending billions on a delivery vehicle. There’s already things that can deliver that sort of bomb.
So anyone wanting a usable nuke is going to have to spend some money, but not on the level of the Manhattan Project.
Volume wise you’re not wrong, but you’d not want to put too much uranium in a box. Not because it would go boom but because you’d want to avoid a criticality accident where the radiation output spikes to lethal levels. And you’d want shielding for those smaller packages, so that will add some weight. Plastic totes won’t cut it for that purpose. But sure, you’d only need a few trucks to transport it all.
Well, sure, but my point was more that making a basic bomb is simple enough. We didn’t even bother testing the Little Boy design. Making something that can reliably go on a missile, along with a reliable missile, is a big part of what has kept the New Mexico economy going for 80 years.
And same with the other point. Yes, criticality odds say don’t do that. Was just trying to get a picture of total volume.
And remember, Iran need not design and build a bomber capable of delivering an atomic bomb. I doubt they could if they wanted to and chances are it’d never survive to the target.
The bigger worry is it is smuggled onto a cargo ship and sailed into Haifa and then driven to Tel Aviv. Or heck, just driven on a yacht right to Tel Aviv. No need for a “compact” bomb.
Almost entirely plutonium implosion weapons; not uranium gun type warheads. A plutonium gun type weapon was calculated to be in excess of 33 feet long, most likely a fair amount longer.
A gun type uranium bomb is smaller and would fit better on a missile than a plutonium implosion bomb.
Uranium is very dense. 19g/cm^3, So a cube 2,75m (or about one cubic yard) is all it takes. I could easily carry that in the bed of my small pickup.
You don’t need to find some big convoy.
I think your math is off by an order of magnitude, but your point remains valiid.
No, I think the math is right. We’re talking for 400 kg of uranium, right? I’m getting 0.02 cubic meters as well. ETA: Oh, wait, you’re talking about the cubic feet part. Yeah, that’s off. Should be .75 cubic feet, I think.
But it’s not pure uranium. Most of Iran’s enriched uranium is no more than 60% pure.
The other 40% is also uranium. Enrichment refers to isotope ratios.
Right. There’s a slight difference in density for different isotopes, but it is negligible for the purposes of this discussion.
Much of what they have is a gas, not ingots of metal. So although the mass may not be so daunting, the volume and containment vessels up the degree of difficulty for moving the stuff about.
Some alternative assessments of the damage at Fordow:
My guess? No one actually knows the full extent of the damage quite yet, and everyone speaking about it with certainty one way or the other risks ending up with plenty of egg on their face.