Iran's nuclear sites have been 'obliterated'. This is how dangerous that could be
A 13 tonne bomb — yes, you read that right — being dropped on a nuclear site so sensitive it was embedded almost 100 metres inside a mountain.
When you put it like that, it's no surprise Sunday's US attacks on Iran put much of the world on edge.
US President Donald Trump hailed the mission, which involved stealth bombers launching strikes on three uranium enrichment facilities, as a huge success.
The targets at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had been "totally obliterated" he said.
While devastating consequences are associated with any act of war, words like "nuclear" and "radioactive" can trigger extra concerns.
Let's unpack them.
The first thing Pete Bryant, from the University of Liverpool, wants you to do, is get high-profile nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima out of your mind.
"It's important to distinguish between nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment facilities, as they are fundamentally different in function, design, and risk," he said.
The sites targeted in Iran — Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow — are uranium enrichment facilities, that handle "low-level radioactive material", said Professor Bryant, a leading radiation protection professional and scientist.
That's in complete contrast to nuclear power plants like Ukraine's Chernobyl, which was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, and Japan's Fukushima, which sustained major damage in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Power plants contain things like nuclear reactor cores, spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, which make them much more dangerous.
"Iran's uranium enrichment facilities are not reactors, do not have comparable inventories of radioactive material, and cannot experience similar failures," Professor Bryant said.
"So while comparisons are often made due to the use of the term 'nuclear', the facilities involved in the current situation are nothing like Chernobyl or Fukushima in design, function, or risk profile."
Just because the Iranian facilities targeted by the US aren't capable of causing a nuclear meltdown, that doesn't mean there aren't dangers.
After all, the US used the world's largest non-nuclear bombs in the attack.
Professor Bryant said the uranium isotopes found at Iran's Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan facilities emitted alpha particles which "are stopped by a few centimetres of air, cannot penetrate skin, and pose a risk only if inhaled or ingested".
In other words, these substances pose little radiological risk. But there are chemical concerns.
He said the uranium gas used in these facilities formed the toxic substances of Uranyl Fluoride and Hydrofluoric Acid when exposed to air and moisture.
The latter is "corrosive and dangerous upon inhalation", Professor Bryant said.
"Even in the unlikely event of an internal release, any contamination would remain largely confined within the structure, especially in underground sites like Fordow, which is protected by 80-90 metres of reinforced rock," he said.
While not necessarily the case in Iran right now, Timothy Mousseau — an internationally recognised authority on the effects of radiation on natural systems — said the blasts could affect the natural environment.
"Large explosions at nuclear enrichment sites or spent fuel storage sites are potentially of very large environmental impacts," Professor Mousseau said.
On Sunday, Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency — an international organisation that promotes the safe and peaceful use of nuclear technologies — said Iranian authorities had reported no increase in off-site radiation levels after the US attacks.
Given radiation is easy to detect, even at low levels, that announcement will have allayed global concerns about an environmental catastrophe.
Although as Professor Mousseau, from the University of South Carolina, pointed out: "Nuclear fuel for bombs and reactors is both radioactive and chemical toxic and their dispersal can have profound environmental impacts for decades, centuries and even millennia given that the half-life of uranium-235, the main active ingredient for nuclear reactors, is over 700 million years, and the half-life of plutonium-239, the main ingredient of an atomic bomb, is more 24,000 years."
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