Ryan Goes Nuclear on National TV. Gets Fact-Checked by Nuclear Physicist. (FB Photo/Meme)

[pokerfan]

8. Mitt also screwed up nuclear weapons 101

Realize that this is from last month but it bears repeating, especially in light of the upcoming foreign police debate.

"If I were Iran, if I were Iran -- a crazed fanatic, I'd say let's get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we'll just say, "Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we're going to let off a dirty bomb." I mean this is where we have -- where America could be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don't have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon." --Mitt Romney

Governor Mitt Romney's description, caught on video, of what he considered the real nuclear threat from Iran has further undermined his national security credentials, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear threats. Iran's nuclear program has nothing to do with dirty bombs. Terrorists would not use uranium -- from Iran or anywhere else -- in a dirty bomb. It is unclear if Gov. Romney was just riffing, or if his advisors had fed him this line of attack. But it is dead wrong.

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The key here is that dirty bombs do not use fissile material. They do not use enriched uranium or plutonium -- the fissile material that Gov. Romney cites. The reason is simple: These materials, perhaps counter-intuitively, are not radioactive enough. Their radioactive emissions don't travel far and are blocked by simple barriers, including skin and clothing. A dirty bomb would use small amounts of highly radioactive materials such as cesium or cobalt, not uranium. Even specks of these elements send out deadly gamma rays that penetrate walls and bodies causing immediate injury.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/18/dirty_bomb_muddy_thinking