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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1952 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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You can't build a deployable nuke out of reactor-grade uranium. Even for highly enriched uranium, you need tens of kilograms of it. Plutonium is much more efficient, which is why everyone who can uses it. A "shitty gun-type nuke" needs even more of the material than implosion type weapon since it's significantly less efficient at getting enough of the material to go critical before the whole thing blows up.

There was a scandal a while back that makes me uncomfortable about putting the United States of America on the list of countries that can make advanced hydrogen bombs.

I'd imagine the destructive power of any bombs our adversaries could field top out at Hiroshima, and mostly are “dirty bombs.”

For what that's worth, which ain't much.

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