Trump Bombing Iran’s Fordo Nuclear Site would not be another Chernobyl

If President Donald Trump decides use the largest conventional bomb in the United States to Destroy the Fordo Fordo from Iran’s nuclear enrichment installationThe colossal force of the explosion would probably lead to victims among workers or any other person on the site.

But that would not trigger a nuclear explosion or a generalized radiological or chemical spillAccording to former nuclear and expert officials.

Seated in the south of the Iranian capital, Tehran, the factory is used to enrich uranium For nuclear energy production or, potentially, a bomb. But although this uranium and its chemical by -products can be harmful to ingest or touch without protective equipment – they will not create wider explosion or regional contaminationsay analysts.

It would only be if Fordo housed nuclear reactors or warheads, which, according to surveillance dogs and international experts, are not the case.

“If you are there and it is bombed, you are in a bunter,” said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former communal, biological, radiological and nuclear army regiment of the British army, NBC News on Thursday.

“But it is because it is an warhead of 2,500 kilograms (around 5,500 pounds) which we are talking about here,” he said, referring to the penetrator of massive ammunition GBU-57 (or MOP), the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world, that only the United States has.

Less than a bunker-business and more than a Buster Mountain, it is perhaps the only conventional ammunition in the world that could do work If Trump had decided to bomb Fordo.

“But if someone thinks it would be like Chernobyl – absolutely not,” said Bretton -Gordon. “Exploding uranium will not create a nuclear explosion; It is a very complex science, which is why it is so difficult to make nuclear bombs. ”

According to Mark Nelson, founder and managing director of Radiant Energy Group, a research firm based in Chicago.

Indeed, “the nuclear substances in Fordo are only very weakly radioactive,” he said. If it was a nuclear site or a missile site, there could be “fission products” – things that uranium decomposes in nuclear reaction – which can cause a broader disaster.

The control nevertheless sharpened the Fordo while Trump deliberated Join Israel’s attacks on Iran.

The most advanced enrichment installation of Iran, Fordo has refined uranium to 60%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is much more than the 3 to 5% necessary for power plants – and much closer to the 90% necessary to build an warhead.

Until 2018, Iran had complied with a historic agreement, Formally known as a joint complete action planThis offered Téhéran billions of dollars in sanctions the reduction in exchange for acceptance of limiting its nuclear program.

The agreement was sealed by President Barack Obama in July 2015, as well as the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom – as well as Germany and the European Union. The most independent observers said it successfully limited the Iran nuclear program.

It was indeed collapsed when Trump moved away from the pact three years later.

Iran was back in talks with Trump When Israel started bombing last week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had no choice Because Iran was heading for the construction of a bombsomething that the international atomic energy agency says it could not confirm.

The guard dog was nevertheless concerned with Fordo, where the naturally extracted form of uranium is transformed into gas and spun at high speed inside the centrifugal. Which separates its heavier isotope, uranium-238, lighter uranium-235 which can be used for civil or otherwise.

Iran says Ford was designed to contain 3,000 of these centrifugesA “size and configuration” which is “incompatible with a peaceful program,” said Obama in 2009.

Observers such as Bretton-Gordon say that the huge Bomb of Vadrouille in the United States could be powerful not only to destroy this installation, but effectively break it under the collapsed mountain. Which could produce an effect similar to The sarcophagus built around Chernobyl After the disaster in 1986, Bretton-Gordon said.

While the protective enclosure of Chernobyl measures 40 feet thick, “at La Forte, we are talking about a sarcophagus 200 feet thick,” said Bretton-Gordon.

This does not mean that the risk of contamination would be zero.

If uranium gas is released, it would decompose in part into hydrofluoric acid, a deadly substance that causes deep tissue burns if it was affected without protective equipment and potentially fatal problems for the heart, the lungs and the nervous system if it is inhaled.

“It is a bad chemical product to be there without correct equipment and safety procedures,” Nelson told Radiant Energy Group. All the survivors of the explosion, or rescuers without the necessary safety equipment, would face “extremely serious” consequences, he said, but has argued that “you must be very close and really unprotected”.

There is also a chance that radioactive materials can infiltrate any source of water that crosses the mountain. But the probable radioactive levels would be low – detectable rather than harmful – Nelson and de Bretton -Gordon said.

In the end, Nelson agreed, all these pale risks compared to the threat posed by the mop bomb itself, whose payload is greater than 5,500 pounds and weighs a total of 30,000 pounds.

“The danger by the sea of ​​the ingestion of salt water is real-even a few liters could kill you,” he analogized. “This danger, however, is relatively low compared to drowning.”