May 6 (UPI) -- The Trump administration argued that one crucial reason for launching Operation Epic Fury was to ensure Iran never developed nuclear weapons.
In June, Operation Midnight Hammer had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capability burying its supply of enriched uranium under tons of rubble.
That was all well and good.
But what about Iran's plutonium? Plu-what? It turns out that in its Bushehr light water nuclear reactor facility, Iran has some 210 tons of "spent fuel." Spent fuel consists of uranium rods used to fuel the reactor that have lost energy. To "recharge" these rods, they are reprocessed. And one of the byproducts is plutonium.
Plutonium 239 is weapons grade and is used more extensively in nuclear and thermonuclear weapons than uranium-235. Plutonium does not exist in meaningful amounts naturally. The physics are that U-238, the dominant isotope in nuclear fuel and not usable in a weapon, absorbs a neutron and decays into Pu-239.
