• rbn@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    If you bomb a facility that is working with radioactive material that can be used to produce a nuclear bomb, isn’t there a pretty high risk of causing a meltdown? And if so isn’t that pretty similar to Israel dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran themselves?

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 days ago

      I highly recommend watching the documentary Zero days which is almost a decade old now, but about stuxnet.

      It was mainly developed by Israel and the US specifically to target this very facility (natanz), and try to blow up nuclear centrifuges and slow down Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

      The project failed (only managed to slow down their program for a few months) and was a prime case of blowback, since stuxnet infected critical infrastructure around the entire world, and even the US had to devote considerable resources protecting their systems from a virus they helped create.

      I believe there’s a pretty low chance of any meltdowns or nuclear events, due to so many fail-safes.

      • rbn@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        I believe there’s a pretty low chance of any meltdowns or nuclear events, due to so many fail-safes.

        Thanks for sharing your opinion. But wouldn’t it still be a serious safety hazard for the local population through contaminated air/water?

        And if no radioactive material is set free, isn’t it still available to keep producing nuclear weapons? According to a German article Iran is estimated to already have sufficient Uranium for 15 nuclear bombs.

        In my simple mind that means you either have to directly destroy that material (and potentially expose millions of people to it) or if you just destroy the production facilities, you can only slow down the enrichment of further material without impacting the current capabilities. Do I oversee something?

    • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      No. Not at all. Nuclear reactions requires a pretty compact geometry. An explosion is the opposite of that. You can irradiate an area, but not cause an actual reaction.