Today we learned the Iranians are producing tritium at a formerly secret plant. I suspect the United States has known this for years, but this is a significant development.
Tritium has zero involvement in peaceful nuclear power. It is only used in bombs. IT IS ONLY USED IN NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
The secret plant known as the “Rainbow Site” is located in Semnan Province — a long way from other known Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities — and was masked as a 2500 acre chemical production facility operated by Diba Energy Siba. Iran has never identified it as a nuclear site in any of their previous negotiations wherein they identified every nuclear facility.
Think of tritium as a sparkplug that enhances nuclear reactions and makes the explosion more powerful, but its most important characteristic is it allows a nuclear weapon to be miniaturized meaning the weapon can be fired atop a missile.
Because tritium makes the nuclear reaction more powerful, less fissionable material can be used — this is the miniaturization referred to above — to create a bomb which means the missile delivery system doesn’t have to transport as much weight and can go farther.
US submarine launched weapons can be dialed up to as much as 450 kilotons of explosive power by using tritium.
The process of miniaturization was an element that gave the west a lot of comfort — “They may have a bomb, but they can’t launch it because it has to be miniaturized and they don’t know how to do that.”
Boom, the Iranians apparently have been working on tritium for decades.
If the US didn’t know about the Rainbow Site then this is a gigantic United States intel failure.
The Rainbow Site is one more proof of the chicanery and bad intentions of the Iranians. There is no credible basis upon which to conclude the Iranians are pursuing peaceful nuclear power because they have:
1. enriched uranium far greater than needed for nuclear reactors; and,
2. they are developing tritium which has no peaceful use.
The urgency of dealing with Iran has just gone from urgent to super urgent.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.
