terça-feira, 25 de maio de 2010

Numbers about bombs, Iran and so on

I have seen journalists saying that Iran will have a nuclear bomb soon because he is enriching uranium at 20%. Well, we have to take care with numbers. A nuclear weapon needs enrichment of 90%. Nuclear power plants use 5%. Reactors for research, 20%. In Nature, it appears at 0,71%. These numbers are the proportion of uranium-235 in the mixture of U-235 and U-238, the two main kinds ("isotopes") of U. According to Global Security, a set of 850 to 1000 ultracentrifuges spends 1 year to produce U enriched at 90% enough to produce a bomb (20-25 kg). Just numbers, but useful to assess scenarios.

Um comentário:

  1. P.S. (03/06/2010): However, note that it is also possible to make a bomb with plutonium. See text of 03/06/2010 in this miniblog: http://belisariominiblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/nuclear-weapons-without-90-enriched.html

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