After Israel and USA's bombing, wouldn't any supposed nuclear bombs go off if there were any?
After Israel and USA's bombing, wouldn't any supposed nuclear bombs go off if there were any?
Considering Israel and the US are bombing Iran's nuclear facilities because they have "weapons of mass destruction", if Iran really did have such weapons, wouldn't bombing the facilities they're held in cause them to explode, or cause an evident ripple at least? I may be imagining this in a way cartoonier way than military weapons actually work, but I'm preparing myself for some incredibly annoying debates.
No. That's not how it works. It could spread nuclear material though.
Edit: if it existed where they're claiming, which it doesn't.
You can explode a nuclear bomb by activating the firing mechanism. This will make the mushroom cloud. If you blow something up NEXT to a nuclear bomb, you can scatter the bomb components and create a dirty bomb, which is just a regular explosion plus SOME radiation.
Nuclear weapons require extremely specific events to successfully detonate, blowing them up with explosives will destroy the mechanisms that make it possible. It will most likely spread the nuclear fuel out though by breaking the shielding and structure that was keeping the radioactive material on the inside.
Nuclear bombs are extremely stable when not armed. If you blow one up with external explosives it will just break.
I do wonder though, if they had enough uranium to make a few nukes and it just got all exploded, wouldn't there still be some fallout/spread over time?
Not necessarily. Nuclear weapons generally require fairly precise timing in order to go critical and properly explode.
If the timing is off, it'll still spread nuclear material around, but it won't make the large mushroom cloud style explosion.
Nuclear bombs are not like conventional bombs. It is very difficult to make them explode. They aren't volatile. The way the ones dropped on Japan detonated was something like two halves of a core hit each other super super hard and were propelled by a bunch of shot gun shells. Compare that to things like black powder where it's just fire.
I don't think fires or bombs on nuclear sites are good, nor do I necessarily believe there were nuclear weapons, but I don't think they'd detonate like what you're thinking. Like how a fire at a fireworks factory causes a horrible chain reaction where everything blows up. Nothing like that.
Reminder that the US accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on itself but since it wasn't armed it didn't explode.
But also the most qualified nuclear inspectors on the planet say Iran doesn't have nukes.
It's not one, its several
https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/broken-arrows/index.html
Some nuclear bombs are so hard to make explode that they need another nuclear bomb to ignite them.
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No it likely wouldn't make them explode if they hypothetically were there.
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It's reasonably certain that Iran didn't and doesn't have any usable nukes at the moment. The claim is that they were working on building them and that the bombing was to stop them from completing any such projects.
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There are conflicting opinions about whether they were really working on building nukes. One might reasonably also say that if they weren't working on it before, they are NOW.
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IIRC there was some kind of religious fatwa against Iran building nukes, which made the claim somewhat credible that they weren't building them. It looked to me like they were instead getting the precursor materials together without doing the final refining and assembly, so that if the fatwa was lifted and the clerics said build the nukes, they could do so relatively quickly. That's just me though, and I don't have any special sources of info.
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Nuclear weapons require very precise detonators to explode, unlike conventional exposives which generally require only heat (and can blow up in the way you describe).
It's unclear, but most international experts agree that Iran has not yet actually put the nuclear material into any detonators. The problem is that Iran has been refining and stockpiling nuclear payloads, which could fairly easily be put into a bomb. That's what most of the world wants to prevent.
Nukes are actually extremely hard to set off. H-bombs even moreso. It requires extremely, extremely precise explosively-driven compression.
Gun-type firing mechanisms are simpler, but by no means “simple”.
From my understanding, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet. What they destroyed is essentially a factory that creates one of the key ingredients required for making nuclear weapons. It's not a weapon yet, and it's not explosive yet. Iran's still a ways away from making that.
I super highly recommend William Spaniel on YouTube. He hasn't covered this bombing yet (I'm sure he will
within a few hourstomorrow), but a few days ago he did briefly go over the process of making nuclear bombs, you should check it out: https://youtu.be/XA1CQp_oJ90?t=480Either way it's an amazing channel for understanding world affairs, I really can't recommend it enough. Go watch any of his recent videos, they're short and well worth it.
So we gave them a nuke abortion?
Pretty much lol, well put!
You can read IAEA's press releases for each attack. They go through the precise function and nature of each building and access the potential danger. Though they haven't updated for the US's latest bombing.
Nah I stuck a screwdriver in there, it's fine
Uh oh spaghetti-o's
Cherenkov radiation blue light INTENSIFIES
Nope. Exploding a nuclear bomb/warhead is a complicated and fickely thing. Everything must happen in the right speed and order, or it will be a dud. It will be a radioactive thing, yes, and might spread some seriously bad stuff around, but thats "just" some radioactive stuff in a few ten meters radius instead of blowing up a city.
Yes. The people in this thread are wrong. Bombing a nuke can set it off, just not fully.
A nuke may require many precise detonations to function as intended. When everything goes right it will release it's full power.
When an external explosion hits the nuke, only some material should activate, causing a relatively tiny explosion. Shouldn't be any real fallout.
This assumes the designers specifically made the nuke to not go off from one explosion. There's no rule that says you need to make nukes safe. People shouldn't dismiss a partial detonation of a nuke like it's nothing.
Edit: look up "one-point safety." Safer nukes are designed so very little happens when there's eg an explosion. If nukes didn't go off when bombed this wouldn't be a thing.
One-point safety is about preventing a nuclear yield when one of the explosives inside the nuke go off by accident and not all of the detonation triggers. It does help to prevent accidental nuclear yield if the nuke is destroyed by an external explosion. But you're understimaing how extremely difficult it is to initiate a nuclear fission event. Not only should all the trigger explosives go off, the fission material has to be hit by the explosion from the right place and in a correct sequence and timeframe. Else the fission won't start.
Bombs are even stored separate from the explosives sometimes, for extra safety. The biggest issue with these attacks is radioactive material contamination. The risk of a nuclear explosion from bombing a weapons development or storage site is one in billions.
The internal explosive may malfunction from an external stimuli, such as a massive bomb detonation near it.
One-point safety sets cutoffs for how much yield can be produced from a malfunction. That's for countries experienced with nukes who had time to fix their catastrophic failures.
Considering there's many ways to design nukes, different countries have different technological capabilities, the answer isn't a squeaky clean "No." when someone asks if nukes can explode when bombed. Answers should have more gradation. And they shouldn't imply a nuke in Iran wouldn't catastrophically fail because sophisticated designs from countries allowed to have nukes have ironed out the wrinkles. Iran is smart and capable like any other country but they're being badly stressed and their context is different than the traditional nuclear powers.
Most likely not, I'd be more worried about local ground contamination from enriched uranium now being exposed.
Nuclear bombs have many safety features built in just for these reasons, enemy bombs you, you don't want your own nukes going off on your land.
Most likely not, I'd be more worried about local ground contamination from enriched uranium now being exposed.
Nuclear bombs have many safety features built in just for these reasons, enemy bombs you, you don't want your own nukes going off on your land.
If there were nukes in those bunkers, they would have moved them as soon as Israel attacked. Sauce: journalist who works in the Middle East.
It doesn't work that way bro
Different topic but same idea. Worth a watch.