rs
Dagobah Resident
Nuculur: http://www.slate.com/id/2071155/
Ok, I have had this bug up my but about Israel's nuclear weapons. Everyone "knows" that the worst kept secret in the middle east is that Israel is in possession of approximately 200 nuclear weapons and has a plan called the "Samson Option" to use them if they ever get backed into a corner (i.e. it looks like they are going to lose a war). Like the biblical story of Samson in the temple, where he destroys the main columns, killing everyone there as well as himself, the option is basically "if we go down, we take everone with us."
Here is the official party line: In the '60s Israel convinces the French to build them a heavy water reactor "for power". (Wink, wink, nudge nudge, "Say No More!") They manage to hoodwink the French into providing them the technology and then proceed to turn the reactor into a plutonium factory. The reason for choosing Plutonium is two-fold. First it is a much much more dangerous an element than Uranium, the refinement of and separation of which produces vast amounts of highly radioactive waste making it far more difficult to work with safely. No wait, that's not it, but I will get to this later. Second, it can be separated from the nuclear fuel chemically bypassing that whole centrifuge cascade thing. Just keep the reactor filled with Uranium that you recycle from the process and it produces plutonium according to the power output. You chemically separate it, machine it, and voila you have a bomb. After all, Mordechai Vanunu said so, so it must be true. All of this occured at the reactor in the Negrev Desert at Dimona.
But something bothers me.
So go to earth.google.com and download google earth. It is a really slick application that shows the earth from space to varying degrees of resolution. (For example my back yard is clear enough that I can tell that the tree in the corner has not been planted yet - but sensitive government installations are "mysteriously" blurry.) Don't worry about google spyware or whatever, your PC is so infected already, it doesn't matter...
Now that you have google earth, go to http://www.stopthebombs.org/nuke/map.html and find all of the facilities intimately involved in US weapons production. Using google earth, zoom down on all of those facilities (except the Nevada test center which is not going to be interesting for the purposes of this discussion).
What I want you to notice is the scale of the facilities.
Go to wikipedia.org and look up "savannah river site". You will see a gif image. Click on it. Then go to google earth and center on 33 15'45.58" N 81 39'33.32 W. Notice how the resolution changes... But again notice the scale of the facility. Go to www.srs.gov/general/about/where1.htm and notice that the whole site is 310 square MILES. And, by the way it is a toxic wasteland and will be so for the next million years.
Go to nuclear.inl.gov/facilities.shtml and see that there is the Idaho site (yet another giant relic of the cold war with massive pollution) and see that it is 45 miles east of Idaho Falls. Go find it and look at the scope of this 890 square mile facility.
Now go find Dimona in Israel. They have 200 bombs, we have made 20,000, so one would reasonably expect that their facilities are 1/100 of what you have seen.
Ok, so coincidentally the Dimona site is also deliberately blurry, but still what you are trying to find is reasonably expected to be huge.
Now also recall how Plutonium is particularly dangerous stuff to process even though it is "easy" to chemically separate.
Now I know what you are thinking, India and Pakistan both did this and actually detonated devices. But it is one thing to build a couple for a big bang, set them off and then thump your chest. It is quite another to build an effective suite of weapons. Nobody really knows how many weapons India and Pakistan have made, and it is easily conceivable that they really don't have much more than what they demonstrated. Both of them proved their point just simply with the big bang. This stuff is difficult and extraordinarily dangerous technology to work with.
Where do they put the tons and tons of highly radioactive waste? Remember, Israel is only slightly larger than New Jersey. [Your area may vary depending on which border you use...] Also recall that the USSR as part of their cold war weapons efforts polluted an area approximately the size of New Jersey with radioactive waste making that area uninhabitable.
So how does Israel come by 200 nuclear weapons? Well recall who runs our foreign policy.
Here is my hypothesis:
- Israel forms a cover story about how they hoodwink those stupid french into giving them nuclear technology.
- The US simply *gives* them 200 weapons. After all, nobody is going to miss 1% of our stockpile.
- However - not being totally stupid - the US retains the activation codes and promises the IDF that "when the time comes, we will give you what you need".
- This, of couse really sticks in the IDF's craw. Something must be done. If we are going to end the world, we damn well are not going to ask permission of the US.
- Jonathan Pollard gets himself in the Navy intelligence and "sells secrets to Israel".
- He gets busted and it is revealed that this is one of the worst security leaks ever.
Now think about it, Israel is supposed to be an ally, so what could possibly be "one of the worst security leaks ever"?
Well, for one, those dang codes... now Israel can act autonomously and there isn't squat we can do about it. It is one of our primary design parameters for nuclear weapons that you simply cannot set the thing off without those access codes. In the middle of the cold war we shared technology with the USSR on nuclear weapons security because we both agreed it was so important. Those codes are everything, otherwise you just have, at best, a dirty bomb. (Which is admittedly pretty serious, but not end-of-the-world stuff).
Now please prove me wrong. Please find the other facilities where Israel processes all of this material, disposes of all of this waste and makes high performance nuclear weapons without testing them. Heck, find the same facilities in India and Pakistan too.
Yes I know about the mysterious blast off of South Africa. Was it a test of a home grown design or was it a demonstration that yes, they really did crack the codes? Pollard was charged in '86 and the blast was in '79, so the time line is not too divergent.
So my theory is that Israel is nuclear because we gave it to them, Jonathan Pollard stole the activation codes, and everyone is now just waiting for the "Samson Option" to play out.
Ok, I have had this bug up my but about Israel's nuclear weapons. Everyone "knows" that the worst kept secret in the middle east is that Israel is in possession of approximately 200 nuclear weapons and has a plan called the "Samson Option" to use them if they ever get backed into a corner (i.e. it looks like they are going to lose a war). Like the biblical story of Samson in the temple, where he destroys the main columns, killing everyone there as well as himself, the option is basically "if we go down, we take everone with us."
Here is the official party line: In the '60s Israel convinces the French to build them a heavy water reactor "for power". (Wink, wink, nudge nudge, "Say No More!") They manage to hoodwink the French into providing them the technology and then proceed to turn the reactor into a plutonium factory. The reason for choosing Plutonium is two-fold. First it is a much much more dangerous an element than Uranium, the refinement of and separation of which produces vast amounts of highly radioactive waste making it far more difficult to work with safely. No wait, that's not it, but I will get to this later. Second, it can be separated from the nuclear fuel chemically bypassing that whole centrifuge cascade thing. Just keep the reactor filled with Uranium that you recycle from the process and it produces plutonium according to the power output. You chemically separate it, machine it, and voila you have a bomb. After all, Mordechai Vanunu said so, so it must be true. All of this occured at the reactor in the Negrev Desert at Dimona.
But something bothers me.
So go to earth.google.com and download google earth. It is a really slick application that shows the earth from space to varying degrees of resolution. (For example my back yard is clear enough that I can tell that the tree in the corner has not been planted yet - but sensitive government installations are "mysteriously" blurry.) Don't worry about google spyware or whatever, your PC is so infected already, it doesn't matter...
Now that you have google earth, go to http://www.stopthebombs.org/nuke/map.html and find all of the facilities intimately involved in US weapons production. Using google earth, zoom down on all of those facilities (except the Nevada test center which is not going to be interesting for the purposes of this discussion).
What I want you to notice is the scale of the facilities.
Go to wikipedia.org and look up "savannah river site". You will see a gif image. Click on it. Then go to google earth and center on 33 15'45.58" N 81 39'33.32 W. Notice how the resolution changes... But again notice the scale of the facility. Go to www.srs.gov/general/about/where1.htm and notice that the whole site is 310 square MILES. And, by the way it is a toxic wasteland and will be so for the next million years.
Go to nuclear.inl.gov/facilities.shtml and see that there is the Idaho site (yet another giant relic of the cold war with massive pollution) and see that it is 45 miles east of Idaho Falls. Go find it and look at the scope of this 890 square mile facility.
Now go find Dimona in Israel. They have 200 bombs, we have made 20,000, so one would reasonably expect that their facilities are 1/100 of what you have seen.
Ok, so coincidentally the Dimona site is also deliberately blurry, but still what you are trying to find is reasonably expected to be huge.
Now also recall how Plutonium is particularly dangerous stuff to process even though it is "easy" to chemically separate.
Now I know what you are thinking, India and Pakistan both did this and actually detonated devices. But it is one thing to build a couple for a big bang, set them off and then thump your chest. It is quite another to build an effective suite of weapons. Nobody really knows how many weapons India and Pakistan have made, and it is easily conceivable that they really don't have much more than what they demonstrated. Both of them proved their point just simply with the big bang. This stuff is difficult and extraordinarily dangerous technology to work with.
Where do they put the tons and tons of highly radioactive waste? Remember, Israel is only slightly larger than New Jersey. [Your area may vary depending on which border you use...] Also recall that the USSR as part of their cold war weapons efforts polluted an area approximately the size of New Jersey with radioactive waste making that area uninhabitable.
So how does Israel come by 200 nuclear weapons? Well recall who runs our foreign policy.
Here is my hypothesis:
- Israel forms a cover story about how they hoodwink those stupid french into giving them nuclear technology.
- The US simply *gives* them 200 weapons. After all, nobody is going to miss 1% of our stockpile.
- However - not being totally stupid - the US retains the activation codes and promises the IDF that "when the time comes, we will give you what you need".
- This, of couse really sticks in the IDF's craw. Something must be done. If we are going to end the world, we damn well are not going to ask permission of the US.
- Jonathan Pollard gets himself in the Navy intelligence and "sells secrets to Israel".
- He gets busted and it is revealed that this is one of the worst security leaks ever.
Now think about it, Israel is supposed to be an ally, so what could possibly be "one of the worst security leaks ever"?
Well, for one, those dang codes... now Israel can act autonomously and there isn't squat we can do about it. It is one of our primary design parameters for nuclear weapons that you simply cannot set the thing off without those access codes. In the middle of the cold war we shared technology with the USSR on nuclear weapons security because we both agreed it was so important. Those codes are everything, otherwise you just have, at best, a dirty bomb. (Which is admittedly pretty serious, but not end-of-the-world stuff).
Now please prove me wrong. Please find the other facilities where Israel processes all of this material, disposes of all of this waste and makes high performance nuclear weapons without testing them. Heck, find the same facilities in India and Pakistan too.
Yes I know about the mysterious blast off of South Africa. Was it a test of a home grown design or was it a demonstration that yes, they really did crack the codes? Pollard was charged in '86 and the blast was in '79, so the time line is not too divergent.
So my theory is that Israel is nuclear because we gave it to them, Jonathan Pollard stole the activation codes, and everyone is now just waiting for the "Samson Option" to play out.
