Posted on 07/08/2008 10:35:21 AM PDT by pissant
I haven’t even heard this on Fox. What’s that about??
550 metric tons doesn’t sound like a lot odes it...
lets do the math:
550 metric tons = 1,212,542.44 pounds
That is just over 1.2 MILLION pounds... nothing to sneeze at...
What’s amazing is we flew it all out to Diego Garcia to load onto ships.
Yes, it is old news. We knew about this yellowcake for years. Yes, Saddam had an active nuclear program until Israel blew up the reactor he was building (osiris)in the 1980s. His nuclear capabilities were nil since then. Don’t get me wrong, he probably would have renewed efforts to start again but the IAEA was all over his backside that he really didn’t have the breathing room to do so. He stalled and misled them as best as he could—plus they were half a$$ed in their efforts. Why is this all considered so important right now? They’re just getting rid of the stuff and bring it to Canada.
This news is 2 or 3 days old already...I believe it won’t get talked about much if it hasn’t already. I hope it does.
It was hidden behind the 1500lbs of enriched uranium, right beside the centrifuge and just in front of the 400 100lb bags of Castor beans they found buried in the desert. No big deal, move along folks!
Since the iaea knew about the 550 tons, Sadam had to search for yellow cake elsewhere? Makes sense to me.
When bush got so much flack about mentioning “yellowcake” in the sotu address, all we heard was how wrong he was. no such thing, blah blah blah....guess he was right.
“Since the iaea knew about the 550 tons, Sadam had to search for yellow cake elsewhere? Makes sense to me.”
It was “sealed” and thus “off limits” to Saddam if he wanted to pretend he was complying with the IAEA.
To get more uranium he would have to go shopping, hence the “Trade Delegation” to Niger.
Of course, he could raid the sealed yellowcake stash if he needed material for dirty bombs in a hurry.
Libya has a 1000 ton stockpile sitting in the Libyan desert.
It remains there despite mincing efforts to come up with a “peaceful” nuclear project, by the our very good and trustworthy friends - the French - (whose “controlled” mines In Niger (ask Joe and Valerie) supplied the material to Libya and reportedly other rogue states as recently as 2000)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560204/Libya-stalls-on-vow-to-destroy-uranium-stock.html
No word on how Libya plans to use it since their nuclear partners (Iraq and North Korea) are otherwise occupied these days).
From your two posts are you saying that the yellowcake will be shipped from Diego Garcia to Canada? What then? Conversion to use in nuclear power plants? Is that why McCain is proposing all those additional plants? Who, or what commercial interest, is getting, or buying (cheap?) all this yellowcake?
If President Bush already knew that there was all this yellowcake already on hand in Iraq, why was it necessary to make the big fuss about buying it from Niger? He could probably have made as good a case with what was already there and at risk.
Paging Joe Wilson. Your yellowcake is ready.
Sure every country large and small has a history of wmd use and large quantities of yellowcake lying around. Sure. (smirk) It’s amusing to watch libs squirm on this subject. Some friends of mine are so sucked in the Hussein-had-no-wmds theme they firmly state that Hussein NEVER!!! had any. Because we didn’t find large stockpiles of them when we went into Iraq. They totally denied his past.
ping for later read!!
I don't believe that's correct. If memory serves, Saddam had a pretty advanced nuclear program going at the time of the first Gulf War, back in '91.
What’s the isotope breakdown on the stuff? Would there be enough U-235 in 550 tons of it to make a bomb?
When I saw the title I thought this was going to be a post about what Ted Kennedy had for dessert last night.
U-235 is about 0.7% of naturally occuring uranium. Yellowcake is about 85% uranium. Now for the math:
550 metric tons * 2205 lbs per metric ton = 1,212,750 lbs of yellowcake.
1,212,750 lbs * 85% = 1,030,837 lbs of uranium
1,030,837 lbs * 0.7% = 7,216 lbs of U-235.
For a crude gun-type bomb about 60 lbs of U-235 is needed. So
7,216/60 = 120 bombs (each about 10-15 kilotons yield).
Yep, that’s enough.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.