Nukes necessary?

Submitted by Keith (United States), Mar 31, 2012 at 00:16

As someone with experience in the mining industry, and a modicum of knowledge of explosives, I do not believe nukes would be needed to destroy or severely set back the Iranian nuclear program. The reason is that air or surface deployed explosives, nukes included, are not especially effective at excavating ground, or causing extensive damage to depths as great as one might expect to encounter in the Iranian underground workings. In other words, just dropping big bombs from the sky will not do what what we want , unless what we want to to leave dirty radioactive residue in such amounts as to deter them ever going near the places again - a political suicidal move to be sure.

However, all that is really needed is for the entrances and the supporting power and water infrastructure to be substantially destroyed. Conventional non-nuclear technology we currently have would suffice to seal the portals, send highly destructive shock waves deep down the tunnels wreaking havoc on the equipment within, and severely damages supporting power and water infrastructure. With multi-ton laser-guided bombs this can be taken care of quite well. JMHO

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