Word: uranium
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...there is not much doubt about what the Iraqis were doing. They were playing an exasperating, and dangerous, shell game with calutrons, which are World War II-era devices to enrich uranium so that it can produce a nuclear explosive. The IAEA concluded after a May inspection that calutrons had been present and then removed from a nuclear site in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad. U.S. intelligence tracked the calutrons to the barracks and then to the Al Fallujah facility west of Baghdad, where the U.N. inspectors went last Friday -- only to find once again trucks carting equipment away. Several inspectors...
...load a new form of nuclear fuel capable of withstanding very high temperatures -- up to 3,300 degrees F (1,800 degrees C) -- into reactor vessels so small that they cannot hold enough fuel to produce such temperatures. The fuel consists of tiny grains of enriched uranium that are coated in ceramic and embedded in billiard ball-size "pebbles" of graphite. The reactor needs no safety cooling system; helium gas flowing through the core simply carries away heat to power a turbine. Even if all the gas escaped, the core could not melt down. Lawrence Lidsky, an M.I.T. professor...
That is the theory. In practice, it's more complicated. The reactors must be built of materials that are both lightweight and capable of withstanding extraordinary temperature changes, from several hundred degrees below zero to several thousand degrees above. To reduce the risk of fatal meltdowns, the uranium fuel must be packed in tiny particles coated with several layers of carbon alloy and carefully machined to very close tolerances. And because the fuel gives off "hot" -- meaning radioactive -- by-products, it is inevitable that the escaping gas will pick up some radioactivity...
Some soldiers who fought in the gulf may have been exposed to a battlefield risk that won't show itself for years. M1A1 Abrams tanks and A-10 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers fired thousands of high-velocity shells that are made with depleted uranium, an extremely heavy metal that enables the weapons to penetrate the armor of enemy tanks. On impact, radioactive oxidized uranium is released into the air, which may have exposed anyone downwind to a lung-cancer risk. The Army and Air Force have judged the use of these shells to be safe. Yet concern over the hazards...
...AirLand scenario, the long-awaited face-off between the U.S.'s high- tech M1A1 tank, with its turbine engine and depleted-uranium armor, and the battle-tested Soviet-built T-72, with its devastating 125-mm gun, would never come to pass. Iraq's heavy armor would be kept at arm's length, picked off from a distance by armor-piercing rounds, laser-guided Hellfires and heat- seeking Mavericks fired from the air. Scout planes and helicopters would identify targets, "squirt" them with lasers, and guide helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in for the kill. "The point is to reduce...