Dirty Bomb, Muddy Thinking -- Mitt Romney screws up nuclear weapons 101

It would be truly frightful to have such a disinterested ignoramus as Commander in Chief.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/18/dirty_bomb_muddy_thinking?page=0%2C0

by Joe Cirincione Sept 19, 2012

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, May 17, 2012

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 counterintuitively, 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

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