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Originally Posted by Marilyn Monroe  Does yellowcake deteriorate? I looked it up, but got stuff about Twinkies, and yellow cake mix. |
No more then the natural decay of uranium. But utilizing the most advanced and expensive refinering systems, it takes about 5 tons to make a critical mass. But that's with multi-billion dollar machinery tools with extremely advanced computers in climate control environments. That ain't Iraq. I read somewhere that for non-advanced nations, it's between 50~100 tons to make a single critical mass. So at VERY ABSOLUTE best, Iraq had the material to make 11 crude weapons, with more likely 5. Not going to happen. It's easier to have a commercial heavy water reactor and simply reprocess out the Uranium to make a gun type. Remember that every nation aside from the US and possibly Russia got civilian nuclear technology first before military tech.
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Seems like if it does deteriorate, since this is stuff acquired before 1991, there's even less to talk about.  |
That is true for the biological and chemical weapons. Mustard gas doesn't have a particularly long shelf life. One note though, the US spends billions checking its nuclear weapons annually. As the critical masses decay along with the tamper in implosion devices turns into non-fissile material, their reliability and yields goes down. They usually do this by removing the fissile material and checking its actual content. I saw a picture of it, the guy was moving a nuke on a cart down a corridor out of a room where nukes were stacked 5 high. Comical yet frightening.