Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States?
thebulletin.org
thebulletin.org
That is just ridiculous. After the Soviet Union fell I remember all these "experts" talking about the looming dirty bomb threat from stolen nuclear materials from Russia, Ukraine and other such places.
Yet nothing has happened, it turns out they do have a pretty good handle on it. And here is hundreds of kg of bomb grade uranium missing right from the country with the supposed many nuclear "experts".
I don't even know what to say. I guess, if you commit a crime, just commit such a fucking big crime that anyone would just be too embarrassed to admit such a crime even been committed.
> And any disclosures about Israel’s bomb program would of course have threatened the Carter administration’s Middle East policies.
In my book, some state with bomb grade nuclear material would surely derail any peace process, in pretty much any region. Look at the war in Iraq that was launched over "WMDs" that we still haven't found. Or the embargoes and threats again Iran over using centrifuges. Fuck they should have just stolen the damn nuclear materials right from the DoE and be done with it. DoE would have been too embarrassed to do anything about it. "Hey Bob, yeah we just found out Iranian agents stole 300kg of bomb grade Uranium from our storage facility...." <Bob, the head of DoE> "Yeah that is too embarrassing, we can't let anyone know about this.
It seems like the proliferation of nukes has resulted in a more stable worldwide society. It's too early to tell, but in a century or two we'll be certain. Is it true that where there are nukes, war isn't?
Basically, MAD only works when both sides are relatively symmetric. When you have weird asymmetric situations, and inability to actual cause true mutual destruction, especially when mixed in with certain ideological elements, nuclear weapons can be anything but stabilizing. For example, an enemy that is already willing to use suicide bombers, or trade civilian/innocent lives to counteract the opponent's advantages may not be fully deterred by nuclear weapons. Especially an enemy that happens to be a non-state actor.
You are of course correct - we do need the long view to actually tell. But I strongly believe that simply proliferation of nuclear weapons, especially in situations without guaranteed mutual destruction is likely not stabilizing.
Technically the new attack vectors were the installation of dual-key Jupiter IRBMs in Italy and Turkey.
The Soviet shipment of IRBMs to Cuba was a natural response to that poor decision.
The Jupiter missiles were all withdrawn, beginning in January 1963, as agreed with the Soviets.
I think that holds only if all parties that have nukes believe they have more to lose if nukes are used than if not.
Ideology can change this decision. That's why nuclear proliferation remains a dangerous thing.
What has changed for the worse, though, is the duration of the wars. For the US at least, WWII was a brief engagement compared to the time spent in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Regional wars are basically hobbies for wealthy, idle nations.
> just commit such a fucking big crime that...
Kill a million and you're the Emperor.
Saying Israel stole that uranium is saying they preferred to steal from a super-power what they could already produce. Possible, but unlikely.
> Richard Kelly Smyth, the President of a company called MILCO, was indicted that same year for smuggling over 800 krytron switches (a component used in nuclear weapons) to Israel without the required US State Department Munitions Export License. Just before trial, and facing a possible 105 years in prison, Richard Kelly Smyth and his wife suddenly disappeared. Sixteen years later they were discovered and arrested while living as fugitives in Malaga, Spain, and extradited back to the United States where he was convicted in the case. The krytrons shipped by Smyth were sent to an Israeli company called Heli-Trading Ltd. owned by notable Israeli movie producer Arnon Milchan.
It's also commonly known that Israel is one of the more active espionage opponents of the USA.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/01/13/israeli-spy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair
This is from 1965, as for the "facts" YMMV
They could however arrange a way for Israel to acquire the uranium, which, if discovered, would place the blame on Israel rather than the US.
They could also take steps to prevent any investigation into that transfer.
There is precedent for this kind of illicit trade, so it's not entirely unlikely that the reason nobody looked into it too deeply is because it was meant to be stolen, and the US likely got something in return for the exchange that was worth maintaining the cover for.
However, if you let the bomb detonate very close the surface, you get less destruction in terms of the blast, but you get insanely high radiation levels for a long time afterwards. Analogous to Chernobyl.
http://www.rense.com/general40/dooms.htm
Cobalt's half-life, ability to be transported around the planet's atmosphere as dust, and the the type of radiation that cobalit-60 produces makes for a pretty good theoretical doomsday device.
President Merkin Muffley: [Turns to Strangelove] You mean people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?
Dr. Strangelove: It would not be difficult, Mein Führer. Nuclear reactors could - heh, I'm sorry, Mr. President - nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely...
This makes much more sense after learning the story of Werner von Braun (via Tom Lehrer's song)
Fully appreciating that movie requires a lot of knowledge of history.
You might want to watch this episode of VICE for their take of the conflict between India and Pakistan ... and the potential destruction of Earth from their nuke arsenals. It addresses that very question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_nuclear_testing_count...
Well, the first several quadrillion iterations of Earth had easy-to-make nukes.
I've concluded the opposite. It takes 386 gen tech to destroy the world.
>"My lord," the Ship's Confessor said, "suppose the laws of physics in our universe had been such that the ancient Greeks could invent the equivalent of nuclear weapons from materials just lying around. Imagine the laws of physics had permitted a way to destroy whole countries with no more difficulty than mixing gunpowder. History would have looked quite different, would it not?"
>Akon nodded, puzzled. "Well, yes," Akon said. "It would have been shorter."
>"Aren't we lucky that physics didn't happen to turn out that way, my lord? That in our own time, the laws of physics don't permit cheap, irresistible superweapons?"
>Akon furrowed his brow -
>"But my lord," said the Ship's Confessor, "do we really know what we think we know? What different evidence would we see, if things were otherwise? After all - if you happened to be a physicist, and you happened to notice an easy way to wreak enormous destruction using off-the-shelf hardware - would you run out and tell you?"
>"No," Akon said. A sinking feeling was dawning in the pit of his stomach. "You would try to conceal the discovery, and create a cover story that discouraged anyone else from looking there."
To answer your question about nukes: There are close to 20,000 nuclear weapons in existence. Over 2,000 of them have been detonated in the past 60 years, but most of those were underground. Detonating all nukes would certainly cause problems, but it wouldn't be the end of humanity.
1. http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pd...
I'd recommend you watch Threads (found the full version on Youtube), which is arguably the best serious look at a post-apocalyptic world.
TL;DR: Humanity wouldn't die out but it would certainly regress 1-2 centuries at least.
This story needs more time to see if there's any truth in it. Commenting now is a waste of time.
It took 40 years to learn some aspect of the truth about Israel's alleged nuclear alert of 1973. And that wasn't a particularly sensitive subject; no other nations were involved to be embarrassed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/when-israel-steppe...
As for the specific claim...steal bomb grade uranium? haha. Anyone believing that is surely insane. South Africa built 6+ of the things under full international fkin embargo (!) ten plus years ago (!). And now people think Israel (a powerful nation) needs to steal material from the most powerful & well controlled nation? Honestly...who comes up with these articles?
Israel already has a nuke and if they don't (lol) then they can trivially acquire one in 20 minutes flat. Think about it...South Africa built 6+ nukes under full embargo ten plus years ago. Now surely Israel can do better...10 years later and no embargo. And yet people still seem to put Israel in the "might have nukes column". Seriously?