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To: Diogenesis
Not doubting this story at all, but there are some things about it that strike me as kinda perplexing, very likely as a result of my own incomplete understanding of physics and a whole lot of other things.

Here goes . . . Critical mass for weapons grade uranium is a couple of kilos, I believe. So wouldn't 33 pounds of weapons grade uranium compressed together in a capsule like that blow up in a nuclear explosion, or at least melt right down through that table top, the floor of a car, and anything else it came in contact with?

It also seems to me that somebody in the Turkish police is handling that thing rather nonchalantly; who's the poor sucker who put that sign up next to it and set it on the table.

Finally, just out of curiosity, "youranuom", which appears on the placard, and also is stamped on the capsule far right, obviously means "uranium." But what language is it, anyone? Babelfish says the German word for uranium is also "uranium," just as in English. Turkish? German and Turkish on the same capsule? German weapons grade uranium destined for Turkey, perhaps? What's missing in this picture? :-)

58 posted on 09/28/2002 2:51:54 PM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker
"So wouldn't 33 pounds of weapons grade uranium compressed together in a capsule like that blow up in a nuclear explosion, or at least melt right down through that table top, the floor of a car, and anything else it came in contact with?"

It's not compressed. Uranium is freakin' heavy (which is why depleted Uranium is used for armor-piercing bullets).
134 posted on 09/28/2002 4:11:31 PM PDT by RightOnTheLeftCoast
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To: LibWhacker
33 pounds of weapons grade uranium

It's enriched. Natural uranium contains a very small percentage of the critical isotope. This item is enriched, but for use as reactor fuel. It still isn't enriched enough to serve in an explosive nuke device. Call it proto-weapons-grade. Still needs processing. You are correct, if it were 30 kg of U235, it wouldn't be packed around like this. 20 pounds of the weapons isotope in one piece would be darned inconvenient to transport in a taxicab. There might be 0.7 kg of U235 in the cylinder a proportion by weight of the whole 30 kg.

258 posted on 09/28/2002 8:18:31 PM PDT by RightWhale
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