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comicjkyesterday at 8:26 PM2 repliesview on HN

Uranium-235 isn't useful for dirty bombs: it's too long-lived and not radioactive enough. Making dangerous levels of radiation requires short-lived isotopes. Some of these are the products of uranium fission, which is why spent uranium fuel is a radiation hazard. But isolating U-235 just to fission it to get radioactive isotopes like cesium-137 would not be the easiest way to get them.


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lightedmanyesterday at 9:18 PM

"Uranium-235 isn't useful for dirty bombs"

It is when your goal is to throw a ton of alpha emitters into the environment for the population to ingest. Do you remember your nuclear cookie thought experiment?

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rotringlvryesterday at 8:46 PM

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