From CFACT

By Kelvin Kemm

All the drama currently unfolding in Iran is reaching a crossroads, or maybe a fork in the road, or, more likely, a spaghetti junction on the freeway.

There certainly is turmoil and a tangle of events unfolding, with many Middle Eastern countries now getting involved, intentionally or unintentionally. Of course, with the effectiveness of modern communications platforms, there’s a torrent of news, but sadly, certain people are becoming more and more skilled at presenting fake news. So one has to carefully examine the news items to see if they are intentionally misleading, placed by some government or formal organization, or possibly placed by some person having fun operating from a basement at home.

Anyway, all in all, what has repeatedly emerged from the Iran drama is the word “nuclear.”

So the U.S. used big bunker-busting bombs to disrupt nuclear “things.” So one has to ask, “Why did they do this? What “things,” and what for? What is the nuclear fuss?”

Another term linked to nuclear in Iran has been “enriched.” So what is this?

Well, let me explain. Way back, a century ago, physicists started to realize that scientific theory said that there was, in principle, a huge amount of energy locked up inside the nucleus of an atom.

The calculations said that if you break a nucleus in half, so to speak, then the energy would come out. But atoms are very small, so the energy would be very little. However, if you can get millions of atoms to do this in rapid succession, that would add up to a huge amount. Imagine a dramatic break at the start of a game of snooker, in which the white ball causes balls to fly off all over the table. Physicists call that a chain reaction when it happens to atoms. One atom splitting, when it is given a good chop, is called fission. The atom which is easiest to fission is uranium because it is the largest naturally occurring atom and is on the verge of splitting anyway.

During World War II, under the Manhattan Project, the first atomic bombs, as they were called then, were developed. The term “atomic” is actually wrong. Instead, today we use the correct term and refer to nuclear weapons.

They used uranium. That is a big snag.

There are two different isotopes of uranium. An isotope is a nucleus which is slightly different to its sibling by having one, two, or three neutrons extra. Two different isotopes behave exactly the same as each other chemically. So you can’t separate them chemically, like separating a mixture of sugar and salt by dissolving them differently. The only difference with isotopes is the weight of a couple of neutrons — in other words, incredibly small.

The snag is that uranium comes in two isotopes. There is U-235, and the other is U-238. When you dig uranium out of the ground, it comes out as 99.3% U-238 and only 0.7% of U-235. But it is the U-235 which will go bang in a nuclear weapon. So natural uranium will not work in a nuclear weapon. Ideally, you need pure U-235 to make a good bang.

So scientists have to take the natural uranium and remove U-238 atoms, one by one, and put them aside.

That process is called enrichment. It is incredibly difficult to do.

Actually, fabricating a nuclear weapon is not too difficult. The really difficult process is producing the enriched uranium. For a weapon, you need to enrich to 90%.

After scientists saw the big nuclear explosions during WW II, they said something like; ‘Gee whizz, look at that blast, I wonder if we can do that slowly, and extract the energy gently?’ The answer was yes. That is called a nuclear reactor.

You don’t want a bang in a reactor. It turned out that you only need an enrichment of about 5% for a conventional nuclear reactor. For a modern Small Modular Reactor, you need about 10% enrichment, or maybe 15%.

As a result, some years ago, international nuclear authorities got together and decided that an enrichment level below 20% is considered commercial, but above 20% is going towards the military. No country needs to go above 20% if it has peaceful nuclear intentions.

Over the last few years, it was determined that Iran had enriched quite a significant quantity of uranium up to about 60%. People asked why. When no acceptable answer was provided, it was worrying.

So the U.S. decided to destroy the 60% enriched material, or at least to bury it under tons of rubble.

So that is why the word “nuclear” has been a significant feature in the Middle Eastern drama.

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Kelvin Kemm

Dr Kelvin Kemm is a South African nuclear physicist and has been a CFACT Senior Advisor for over two decades. He is Chairman of Stratek Holdings, a nuclear project management company, and is past Chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa).He has given both Congressional and Senate briefings in Washington DC. He has been guest speaker at over 20 US universities, and most recently gave a guest presentation in New York City. He has presented evidence to the Legislature of the State of Maine concerning nuclear power.