OH NO, NOT HEAVY WATER
What's the big deal about this heavy water? Water with lead in it? Water with Viagra? Well, nothing quite so simple. Heavy water is not really water at all if you want to get really technichal. It's actually a substance called deuterium oxide, D2O or 2H2O, not the H2O of regular water. The usual way of building a bomb requires graphite in order to slow the speed of the neutrons necessary to create a chain reaction (Fermi's discovery that made the atomic bomb possible).
BUT
And I mean BUT....heavy water allows the use of UNENRICHED uranium to achieve a chain reaction so that sophisticated fuel enrichment facilities like P2 centrifuges are not necessary. This is the Third World way of joining the club.
So why does Iran need heavy water if they already have the ability to enrich uranium with their ballyhood P2 centrifuges? I don't know, but these obvious displays of both centrifugal opulence and the acquiring of heavy water sounds like all of the ingredients necessary to conduct a bluff to me.
1 comment:
duterium is an isotope of hydrogen. it has an extra neutron, otherwise it's identical to hydrogen. one proton, one electron and the extra neutron. d2o is still water, just heavier with the extra neutron.
d2o in very small quantities exists in the water you drink everyday. it's actually easy to separate from water, it just takes enourmous amounts of electricity. in fact in wwii the germans with the help of the norwegians were separating it at a hydro plant in norway. they just couldn't get much of it in a short time frame. it's one of the reasons the germans gave up on making a bomb. they thought it would take too long so they used their resources to develop other technologies. the americans proved it was possible by doing it from scratch in less than two years.
now 61 years later we are constantly told how hard and long it would take to build a bomb. rubbish. with today's technology it's much easier. i think quite a few more countries have the bomb than we are being told. for example, certainly japan has them, they're rich, smart and have the know how. pakistan has them and has admitted to telling others how to get them, like libia. why could they not be helping iran? and we know the saudis help finance their research so why would they not want a return on their investment in the form of product?
let's all face it. the cat is out of the bag. there is no going back to a time before the bomb existed. no about of talky-talky is going to change that.
Post a Comment