In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence.
Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said.
The new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration’s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.
Maybe you shouldn’t tell everyone your plans you fucking dumb ass pedo fascist orange little bitch.
I wish somebody would blurt this out at one of his stupid little press conferences, just to watch him melt down and poop himself in front of everyone.
But how else will he Activate his Base™ on Truth Social®??!?!
Can we convince trump to go in there and get it with his bare hands because he’s the best at everything and would do it better than anyone has before?
remove and destroy
Nah, we only wanted to remove it. Trump and Hegseth have both been public that we should start building another huge wave of nuclear weapons, and you need uranium to do it. Far easier to try and mug someone else for theirs (and their oil and whatever else you think you can get) than it is to actually buy it and refine it yourself.
You could buy thousands of times the quantity of Uranium from Australia for less than what the US-Iran war is costing per day.
What Australia exports is likely Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU), which is less than 20% U²³⁵, and is suitable for nuclear power plants.
Nuclear powered submarines require Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), which is 20% or more U²³⁵.
Weapons-grade uranium is usually enriched to 90% or higher.
Getting to that 90% level is extremely difficult & time consuming. U²³⁵ and U²³⁸ are chemically identical, so it’s converted to a gas & spun in centrifuges to separate the atoms by weight. Typically hundreds of centrifuges are used in this process. As an example, it took roughly 3 years for the Manhattan Project to refine enough U²³⁵ for the first bomb. That bomb used roughly 60 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium. To get those 60 kg, over 9 metric tons of raw uranium was processed.
It’s this weapons grade uranium that Iran has collected and is protecting.
What’s the “near” in the “near bomb-part uranium” part then? Just a lower ratio of U235?
~80%
Yes, exactly.
But what you buy from Australia is monitored, what you steal from another country can be mismanaged.
And?
If the US decides to do that the rest of the world leaders would just stand there dick in hand watching waiting for their paycheck
Or Canada
Can’t “destroy” uranium anyway… unless they’re planning for a little unscheduled fission reaction.
You can’t destroy it but you can unpurify it.
By what, adding in less reactive species? What they probably have in mind is to pour a truckload of concrete on it.
You add it to enough regular uranium or uranium ore that the enrichment goes under fuel rod levels. One part weapons-grade to 4 parts unenriched uranium should be safe.
Adding it to concrete is not very effective, it’s easy to purify uranium from other elements and then you just get your enriched uranium back. For separating elements you can use chemistry, only separating isotopes is hard.
Adding it to concrete is not very effective, it’s easy to purify uranium from other elements and then you just get your enriched uranium back.
I don’t think the United States have any intention of handing any of this uranium back to Iran were they to get their hands on it, hence there would be no pint in de-enrichment. My point is that they are probably going to store it in concrete dry cask storage somewhere they can secure, if they aren’t going to put it for use to their own ends.
Iran should have the exact same nuclear capacity as Israel. Preferrably zero for both, but if that’s off the table then non-zero. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Tired of these crazy, murderous thieves, NGL.
Good for them. Hoping they enrich further and go on to test at least three weapons
