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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] nuclear psub?
Not so Dale. Saddam has his own source of uranium. They have some
fairly rich U-ore up by the northern border. People wondered why he
attacked the Kurds like he did. It was more than *just* testing his
weapons.
Carl
> "Dale A. Raby" wrote:
>
> Hey, now.... wouldn't that be cool. The reactors on board some of
> those old space probes launched in the sixties are still producing
> current from their thermocouples in atomic piles... tiny ones at
> that...after all these years.
>
> Here's the problem... such little reactors generally use weapons grade
> reaction mass... and even when they don't they are still carefully
> controlled by various government agencies. There is radiation
> shielding and all the danger from not containing the reaction
> properly.
>
> Then there is the problem with people like Saddam wanting to grab your
> sub for a source of fissionable material... oh, and did I mention
> this? I am a US Army Reserve NCO, and bound to report such things to
> my commander... though I suspect he'd get a good laugh out of this
> one.
>
> I find it interesting though that in the 40 odd years since the
> Nautilus, that there are still military submersibles being made with
> diesel/electric propulsion. Economies of scale, I'd guess.
>
> On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 14:59, Nero Wolfe wrote:
>
> > I was at the University of Chicago today and i saw the monument to
> > enrico firmi's CP-1. Chicago Pile 1 was a big pile of graphite and
> > unenriched uranium... Litterally a pile. This got me thinking...
> > A reactor is disturbingly simple. I think you know where I'm going
> > on this.... The technology is simpler than cartsens boat...
>
>
> Dale A. Raby
> Editor/Publisher
> The Green Bay Web
> http://www.thegreenbayweb.com
--
"You delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in an answer
it gives to a question of yours, or the question it asks you, forcing
you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx." -- Kublai
Khan