Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Chemicals weapons in Iraq Message-ID: <1990Aug16.030606.15802@cbnews.att.com> Date: 16 Aug 90 03:06:06 GMT References: <1990Aug8.030444.25822@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 41 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: "Mitchell F. Wyle" >1. "Dust Bomb" If one puts Plutonium dust in one's petroleum, what > happens? Does it sink and cause no harm? Does it dissolve and > make the oil radioactive? Oil is not a good solvent for inorganic materials like metals and metal salts. You might get a suspension of the dust in the oil, depending on details like relatively densities and the viscosity of the oil. My guess would be that it would settle out... but that settling might be very slow in thick crude. In any case, filtering, although possibly difficult, would clean it out. >2. What is US sop if enemies attack with low-yield tactical nukes? > Do you respond in kind? Probably. It is officially US policy to go nuclear in certain cases even when the other side has not, e.g. an overwhelming attack in central Europe. (There was essentially a conscious decision in the 1950s not to maintain conventional forces in Europe large enough to positively stop a Soviet conventional attack.) In practice there would be great pressure to avoid use of nuclear weapons, even in retaliation: better to present the use of nuclear weapons as the act of a madman, and refrain from responding in kind. One must distinguish SOPs from what would actually happen. :-) Use of nuclear weapons requires presidential authorization, barring extreme circumstances not relevant here, and that means it doesn't really matter what the rules say -- it's the president's decision. Long odds that he would refuse permission unless the survival of the US seemed at stake. >3. What happens to 20-40% of the world's oil if a nuclear device is > detonated deep inside the oil "pool?" My personal speculative > answer to this question is "Not much." There is no single "pool" of oil involved, in the sense of a swirling underground lake, and the effects of a single nuclear bomb should be quite localized. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry