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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 10/27/12

Paranoid-A Rock and Roll Epistle

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The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex has been THE cash cow for the oligarchs since the end of the Second World War. It has also served as a cudgel to keep the American people in line with terms like "domino theory," "world-wide Communist conspiracy," and "fellow travelers," during the Cold War. Today, terms like "Islamic terrorism," "the new Caliphate," and "Sharia Law in America," serve those self-same functions.

The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is also the means by which the oligarchs and their puppets continue to attempt to justify the continual reduction and elimination of civil rights for the American people, with laws like the Patriot Act.

Iran seems to be the number one target on the hit parade for the chicken-hawks of America's Military-Industrial Complex, even ahead of Syria. The reason that is given publicly is Iran's continuing development of nuclear weapons. The real reason is control of the Iranian oil fields, just as the real reason for the war in Iraq was the oilfields near Mosul and Basra.

Having nuclear reactors and materials does not mean you can suddenly create a nuclear weapon that can wipe out a city. It requires a high level of sustained applied science and engineering, plus a large industrial base to create a working nuclear weapon, let alone one sufficiently sophisticated to be carried by a plane or ballistic missile. The first thing that must be created is a quantity of fissile material, in the form of a nuclear isotope, to make a bomb.

There are three nuclear isotopes available for a large-scale nuclear weapons program.

The first of these is uranium-235 (U-235), a naturally occurring (0.72%) isotope of uranium, which is separated from the heavier U-238 by a system using either lasers, jet nozzles, gaseous diffusion, or gaseous centrifuges, or some combination of these methods, to separate the lighter U-235 isotope. First, a solution of uranium hexafluoride (UF 6 ) must be created by converting uranium "yellow cake" using various fluorine (F) compounds, including hydrofluoric acid. It is a difficult and dangerous process, requiring a facility the size of a small city.

U-235 requires a far greater mass of fissionable material than our second isotope, plutonium-239 (Pu-239), to achieve critical mass and detonate 60kg of 90% pure U-235 for the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and a yielded an explosion of approximately 11.5KT. Six kilograms of 92% pure Pu-239 was used for the Nagasaki bomb, yielding an explosion of approximately 22KT. Modern bomb making techniques have reduced the required amount of fissile material to create a nuclear weapon, but the tyranny of nuclear physics remains: it still requires almost ten times as much U-235 to make a bomb as it does Pu-239.

Plutonium-239 (Pu-239) is formed in a heavy water nuclear power reactor, by bombarding U-238 with neutrons. It is the preferred material for nuclear weapons makers everywhere. However, it is very dangerous to work with, and if your neutron bombardment produces too much of Pu-239's sister isotopes, Plutonium-238 or 240, it can cause the bomb to "fizzle" (lower than expected detonation, even no detonation at all), or undergo an uncontrolled chain reaction, creating a spontaneous meltdown and explosion of the bomb's materials (a radiological, not a nuclear bomb), but not a nuclear detonation. Elimination of these unwanted isotopes by keeping careful control of your breeder reactor, as well as using methods similar to those for separating U-235 from U-238, reduce the possibility of these problems occurring.

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Richard Girard is a polymath and autodidact whose greatest desire in life is to be his generations' Thomas Paine. He is an FDR Democrat, which probably puts him with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the current political spectrum. His answer to (more...)
 

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