Bombing Nuclear Power Plants

Implications of Bombing a Nuclear Power Plant.

The plan to bomb nuclear power plants in Iran by Israel and the United Stares of America is a very dangerous idea. But just how dangerous? I've been snooping around for some opinions and estimates of the danger this plan imposes on our planet.

The first extract is taken from an article written in April 2008, by Floyd Rudmin in the website of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. The extracted parts are presented in this colour.

The US is said to have 10,000 targets in Iran.  Primary among these are all nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast near Kuwait, and the nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Esfahan.  Bushehr is an industrial city, with nearly 1 million residents.  As many as 70,000 foreign engineers work in the region, which includes a large gas field.  Natanz is Iran’s primary enrichment site, north of Esfahan, which also has nuclear research facilities. Esfahan is a world heritage city with a population of 2 million. 

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor has 82 tons of enriched uranium (U235) now loaded into it, according to Israeli and Chinese news reports.  The plant is scheduled to become operational this summer, producing electricity.  The Natanz enrichment facility is operating a full capacity, enriching uranium for use in reactors according to IAEA reports.

According to the Center for Disease Control, the uranium 235 used in nuclear reactors has a half life of 700 million years.  As nuclear reactor fuel is used, it turns into uranium 238, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years.  These radioactive isotopes are dangerous to health because they emit alpha particles and because they are chemically toxic.  When inhaled, they damage lung tissue.  When ingested, they damage kidneys and cause cancer in bones and in liver tissues.  According to a recent review of medical research, uranium exposure causes babies to be deformed or born dead.

Never in history has it happened that nuclear power plants and nuclear enrichment facilities have been deliberately bombed.  Such facilities, everywhere in the world, operate under severe safety conditions because the release of radioactive materials is deadly, immediately and also long after exposure.  If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb a fully fueled nuclear power plant or nuclear fuel enrichment facilities, containment will be breached; radioactive elements will be released into the environment.  There will be horrific deaths for families in the surrounding vicinity.  The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India.

Reactors and enrichment facilities are built of extra strong concrete, often with multiple layers of containment domes, often built underground.  Bombing such facilities will require powerful explosives, earth penetrator war heads, maybe nuclear warheads.  The explosions will blow the contamination high into the atmosphere.  Where will it go is a question that is difficult to predict.

During the January 1991 Gulf War, many oil wells in Kuwait were set afire. According to the US State Department, “black rains were reported in Turkey, and black snow fell in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains”.  The radioactive plumes from bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would reach the same destinations, in the same weather conditions.  But the radioactive plume might go north, into Europe.  During the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the USA, UK, Australia, and others, armour piercing shells and bombs tipped with depleted uranium (U238) were used.  It took 9 days for uranium particles from these weapons in Iraq to reach England, where air sample filters showed a 300% increase in uranium particles attributable to the war.  The weather patterns at the time that carried the particles to England passed over central Turkey, the Ukraine, Austria, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, to England, then over Norway and Finland to the Arctic.  This was reported by The Times, summarizing a study in European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics.

The nuclear fallout from bombing Iran will have a half life of 700 million years.  That is a duration difficult to comprehend.  Jesus Christ was preaching a mere 2 thousand years ago.  In the evolution of humans, our earliest ape-like ancestors were walking upright a mere 5 million years ago.  The Bush administration and its Israeli advisors are now planning to contaminate the planet for 700 million years.  From the rhetoric of Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they, too, think that is a good idea.  The US media seem to applaud.

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences.  The planet is not large.  What goes around, comes around.  Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America.  Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip.

The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves.  The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows.  Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible.  Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time.  The American Way of Life will be finished.  An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow.  Mechanized farming and food transport will be finished.  Famine is a possibility.  Food riots are a certainty, in the land of plenty, with the fuel gauge on empty...

It's hard to imagine why this idea of a destructive bombing of Iran's nuclear plants would make sense enough to be considered by these two countries. We know that the Zionist lobby in America is able to sway Congressional and Presidential opinion. Also America may in fact believe that Iran is too far away, such that the effects of a nuclear fallout in the USA be negligible.

But what might the psychology be of this Zionist State which has harboured a besieged mentality since 1947? Could Israel ever be free of its chosen manner of existence? Has Israel become so tunnel visioned that it cannot possibly imagine a peaceful process out of these very grave circumstances?

Some people have speculated that Israel is perhaps a suicidal state. I do not want to pursue that idea here although it is difficult to comprehend its actions and especially the constant danger to which it  subjects its citizens and the rest of the earth. Here are some opinions suggesting that Israel maybe a suicidal state:

Letter from Israel: Can Israel be seen as a suicide bomber?

From The American Conservative: Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing.

From the New York Times: "The Golem" seemed painfully apt: its central concern is the self-destructive consequence of Jews resorting to violence to defend themselves.

From the Haaretz - Israels daily newspaper in English: If there is one person who someone feels that our international situation is getting worse and another who thinks we are behaving like a suicide state, they should think again.

But what about the option of negotiation and a respectful dialogue between Israel and Iran with America and the rest of the international community as fair observers? Why is that not possible?

The next extracts are from the Asia Times:

Brazil steps between Israel and Iran

By Pepe Escobar

Talk about a Via Dolorosa. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the first Brazilian president to visit Israel officially. Lauded for his charisma, swing and formidable negotiating powers - United States President Barack Obama refers to him as "the man" - little did Lula know that to engage his hosts this week he would have to give the Prophet Abraham a run for his money, no less. 

In the end, he stood his ground. He made no concessions. And unlike United States Vice President Joseph Biden last week, heeven managed not to be publicly humiliated by his hosts.

Lula is no stranger to tough neighborhoods. Former bouncer turned hardline politician Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, boycotted Lula's speech at the Knesset (parliament) as well as Lula's meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason: Lula did not visit the tomb of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl. But neither did France's President Nicolas Sarkozy or Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when they visited Israel. 

Brasilia - as much as Paris and Rome - knows very well that a visit to the tomb is not mandatory on presidential trips. Yet a choir of the Likud/settler hardcore Zionist faction in Israel carped that this would fatally wound the Brazilian government's drive to become a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

After being grilled in the Knesset - including by Netanyahu - for his policy of non-confrontation and dialogue with Iran, Lula did not flinch. He condemned both the Holocaust and terrorism; he reminded his hosts of Brazil's and Latin America's stand against nuclear weapons; he stressed "dialogue" and "compassion" to solve the Middle East conflict; he defended a viable two-state solution for Israel and Palestine; but he also did not refrain from criticizing the expanded colonization of East Jerusalem. He received a standing ovation and, according to some members of parliament, "more applause than [former US president] George W Bush". 

The tropical prophet

Not even at his Abrahamic best would Lula have been able to mollify Zionists and assorted hardliners. Anyway, Lula told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz what every serious player in the Middle East already knows; the "peace process" is going nowhere, and bringing new mediators such as Brazil to the table is the only way forward. 

And the same applied to the Iranian dossier: "The [world] leaders I spoke to believe that we must act quickly, otherwise Israel will attack Iran." Lula is convinced that further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program are counter-productive. And this quote is bound to resonate globally, "We can't allow to happen in Iran what happened in Iraq. Before any sanctions, we must undertake all possible efforts to try and build peace in the Middle East." 

The official Brazilian government view - echoed by much of the international community (that is, not the exclusive club of Washington and the usual European suspects) - is that everything is still to be negotiated with Iran over its nuclear dossier. Lula is adamant: Iran has a right to develop a peaceful nuclear program in terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory. 

Brazil is currently a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council. As much as China, it will not support new US-driven sanctions on Iran - regardless of US Secretary of State Robert Gates spinning that the US has enough backing to advance a fourth, tough round of sanctions, with Saudi Arabia finally persuading China. China will never vote against its own national security interest - and Iran is a matter of Chinese national security. Lula will be in Tehran in May and will meet - again - with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Hardline Zionists are - what else - fuming.

Lula knows very well that so-called "smart sanctions" that would apply mainly to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - in charge of the bulk of economic and political power in Iran - would also affect millions of civilians connected to IRGC-controlled businesses, and thus the population at large, which is already paying the price for the current sanctions. The IRGC controls at least 60 ports in the Persian Gulf. Preventing Asia from doing business with Iran would imply a naval blockade - and that's a declaration of war. 

How not to push Iran 

Lula has hit the Middle East at a crucial juncture - just as Netanyahu's government has decided to build more settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even to the detriment of crucial US support on the Iranian front. 

Ironically, it's on the economic front, rather than geopolitics, that Brazil is managing to seduce the Israeli establishment. Israel signed a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Mercosur [1] - the fifth-largest bloc in terms of gross domestic product in the world - much to the chagrin of Palestinians, who identify the FTA as a powerful boost to the Israeli military-industrial complex. 

And this when it is clear that Brazil is strictly in favor of a viable Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders. This FTA carries a key strategic provision - it allows the transfer of weapons technology to Mercosur members. Thus weapons responsible for the repression in Gaza will soon be available in South America. 

On a parallel front, bolstering Brazil's role as mediator, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally suggested to Lula that Brazil could make two visits - by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and by Netanyahu - coincide on Brazilian soil. Assad goes to Brazil this year, and this week Netanyahu also accepted an invitation. A tropical, informal Syrian-Israeli summit might be ideal to break the ice. Lula and Netanyahu have adopted a bilateral system of meetings between heads of state and top ministers every two years. 

By what about the US in all this? An official US-Brazil strategic agreement is also now in place, implying two foreign minister-level meetings a year, one in the US, one in Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim has a very close relationship with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On her recent visit to Brazil, Clinton pressed both Lula and Amorim to support tougher sanctions on Iran. The refusal was polite but firm. 

Clinton was left to complain at a press conference about how Iran is "using" Brazil, Turkey and China to evade sanctions. Amorim for his part is always fond of remembering the Iraqi disaster: "I was an ambassador at the UN during the critical moments of deciding about Iraq. And what we saw was a big mistake." 

Lula could not be more specific: "It is not wise to push Iran against the wall. I want for Iran what I want for Brazil: to use nuclear energy for peaceful ends. If Iran goes beyond that, then we will not agree with it." Roughly, that's the same position as China's. 

Lula and Obama had seemed to be in synch on Iran, starting from their meeting on the sidelines of a Group of Eight plus five meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, nine months ago. Then, Obama even encouraged the Brasilia-Tehran dialogue, as long as Brazil pressed on Iran the commitment to a strictly civilian nuclear program. That's exactly what Lula told Ahmadinejad when they met in Brazil. It is the Obama administration's position that has substantially hardened. 

Brazilian diplomats insist that Ahmadinejad never closed the door to negotiations. In discreet, bilateral diplomatic talks, US officials even admit to their Brazilian counterparts that Ahmadinejad himself is not inflexible, nor is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a February 19 speech at the naming of an Iranian destroyer, Khamenei once again denied that Iran was after nuclear weapons and stressed that they were illegal according to Islamic law because they killed large numbers of innocent civilians. 

The problem has been amplified by much American and European media hype. Defusing the sanctions drum rolls, even Clinton, in a moment of candor during her South American trip, was forced to admit that sanctions could take "several months" to be adopted, if at all. 

Even before Clinton's visit, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had already admitted to Brazilian media on the record that Brazil could be a "bridge” between Iran and the US/European Union front, because of its "realist" position. Mottaki does not see Brazil as a "mediator" - but rather as "acting to facilitate consultations", as Tehran does not believe that any country should speak for its (Tehran's) own interests. 

Neither did Brasilia explicitly ask to be a mediator. Mottaki has revealed he's developing substantial "telephone diplomacy" with Amorim. Tehran obviously sees the benefits of establishing a dialogue channel to the industrialized West via a key developing country. 

Blessed are the peacemakers - for they shall inherit the earth. - from the book of Mathew.


But where are the peacemakers?