American military intervention in Syria could go nuclear

Five Ways a Wider Syrian War Could Go Nuclear Truth Dig, By Harvey Wasserman, 13 Sept 13, In the wake of an apparent break in the march to a wider war, the reality of a nuclear dimension in Syria remains largely unspoken.

There are at least five key reasons why American military intervention in Syria’s civil war could go nuclear:

(1) There’s a reactor near Damascus.

It is relatively small, by most accounts containing about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium. That’s not much in the scheme of things when it comes to building an atomic bomb. But as Alexsandr Lukashevich of the Russian Foreign Ministryputs it, “If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MSNR) near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic.”……

(2) Despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s promise of an “unbelievably limited” attack, once the U.S. military commits to action in Syria, it is unlikely to hold back any of its tactical arsenal. That would almost certainly include depleted uranium (DU).

When shells made of this super-hard material penetrate armored vehicles, hardened bunkers and other structures, the DU disperses into fine radioactive particulates that are easily inhaled. Wherever deployed—as in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan—DU inflicts horrifying health consequences, including cancer among people of all ages and birth defects among children born well after its use. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, imposing virtually permanent contamination.

Should DU weaponry be used yet again, this time in Syria, the contamination would be widespread and irreversible. Many thousands of innocent people—including the countless unborn—would suffer greatly. As with all radioactive fallout, the lethal effects will stretch through the generations.

(3) When the world’s superpowers collide, nuclear war is always a possibility.

At this point, the U.S. and Russia appear to be coming together. But in this too-often irrational global tinderbox, the stakes could not be higher.

In such situations, we hope for the best, but can’t lose sight of the potential worst………

(4) In the bottomless turbulence that defines today’s Middle East, the Americans and Russians so far seem to retain some shreds of rationality. But given the Peaceful Atom’s half century of weapons-grade proliferation, we cannot know which nations or marginal groups might now have atomic devices and what random impulses might prompt their use.

In a profoundly unpredictable world, each of the more than 400 commercial-sized reactors still operating continues to produce radioactive materials that could fuel a nuclear weapon.

Each of those reactors is itself a profoundly vulnerable target. Should the situation in Syria devolve to a wider war, the likelihood of a freelance atomic “situation” becomes all too probable.

(5) While the world’s attention is focused on Syria, the global-scale disaster at Fukushima spirals out of control.

The more serious the crisis in Syria, the more it will divert attention from an existing nuclear disaster. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/five_ways_a_wider_syrian_war_could_go_nuclear_20130913/