The Lowest-Tech Atom Bomb (iraq)

[Chuck Cooper <cooperc@teleport.com>]

Presented as weekend reading:

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The Lowest-Tech Atom Bomb



Technology for Presidents By Richard A. Muller October 11, 2002



What Saddam still needs for nukes.



Saddam Hussein had us completely fooled, once. Prior to Desert Storm in 

1991, we had monitored and embargoed his importation of high tech 

centrifuge and laser equipment that could be used to make 

highly-enriched uranium (HEU). material thatonce you have itmakes 

building an atomic bomb easy. After Saddams defeat, inspectors found 

that he had spent an estimated $8 billion building calutrons, ancient 

devices (from the 1940s) that Ernest O. Lawrence had used to make HEU 

for the Hiroshima bomb. (See Springtime, Taxes and the Attack on Iraq, 

technologyreview.com, Feb. 7, 2002). Nobody had anticipated that Saddam 

would use such a low-tech approach.

===Snip========



http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_muller101102.asp