If we nuke Iran will our forces deployed overseas be exposed to radiation??

Question

...Via radioactive fallout or some other vector in harmful doses?? How small of a radioactive dose is harmful?? it has been ascertained in the studies done by government radiation releases over the town of Hanford that small exposures to radiation are likely to have highly adverse effects on the human thyroid gland... frequently resulting in thyroid cancer. Small doses of radiation also may cause a high rate of birth defects... Please try to support your responses with useful information... this is something we should all discuss before advocating use of nuclear force on the middle east with our loved ones deployed in the region. Plus I just really want to know... because I thinks its important.

I don't mean to say that I advocate nuking Iran... its just that so many people are always crying that a nuke should be dropped whenever we have even a minor disagreement with anyone... In this case it just happened to be Iran and I wondered if people would understand that a nuke is serious business if they realized that it could harm our troops...

but then I really wanted to know... would doing that harm our troops.... I don't doubt it would... but to what extent?? What about the environment?? What about countries and people nearby??

I didn't mention the civilian casualties in my question because any sucker who thinks they can just drop nuclear bombs to solve problems obviously won't be swayed by the suffering of civilians anyways... thats just not how the "just nuke em" mindset thinks... and you can't reach them on that level... because the only reason they so quickly wish to drop a nuke is because they simply don't care about things like that.

Answer 1

Should the US use nuclear weapons on Iran, the most l;likely scenario is to use them on the centrifuges under construction to separate the isotope U-235 from the more common U-238. U-235 can be used to build nuclear weapons U-238 cannot. As Iran is building the separation complex underground, in hardened facilities, most likely the US would use B-61 Bombs, which have relatively small payloads around 100-200 kilotons.
And, since the bombs would be targeted for underground facilities, the bomb would NOT be an air burst, but rather a bunker-buster type of detonation. Unfortunately two serious problems result here. (1) underground bursts will emit large amounts of radioactive dust and earth materials that will eventually come to earth as radioactive fallout but .... (2) should Iran begin operating the facility its destruction would also release the uranium hexafluoride being separated into the air. This would be an immense amount of radiation though probably less than the 10,000,000 curies released at chernobyl.
American armed forces would be exposed to the fallout depending upon the weather and distance from the blasts. Rain would help knock the fallout down, yet is unlikely. I don't know the prevailing wind directions so I can't speculate as to the cloud fallout paths. Small doses may cause birth defects but statistics also reveal that LARGE doses do not necessarily mean that birth defects will be found in every case. Its a crap shoot.

Answer 2

It's likely that our forces would be exposed to some type of radioactive fallout, as stated in the previous answers. Our bodies are capable of handling some amounts of radiation, and the damage done is based upon the person. Any type of cancer can really be developed by radiation exposure. Afterall cancer is just cells that are regenerating after some have been destroyed and with every cell that must regenerate there is a chance that cell will become cancerous. It also depends very much on the person and their state of health. Cancer cells are generated all the time, but our bodies recognize them and send them into apoptosis before they become a problem. As for the question of how small of a radioactive dose is harmful, that too is dependent on many things... one person may develop cancer after a small dose of radiation while others would not. I would not worry so much as to the development of birth defects, I dont think many of our soldiers are having kids anytime soon :)

Answer 3

There is a lot of noise, but I don't think you need to worry much about that. Precision bombing and special-purpose bombs like the "bunker penetrators" and the MOAB have all but made nukes unnecessary. And you don't need to cite Hanford when we have Chernobyl to study. I understand mushroom-hunting was once a popular local pasttime, and that's now out of the question.
The "nuke 'em" rhetoric I'd take as simple hyperbole.

Answer 4

Not to mention all of us back here in the USA. What goes around comes around. If we nuke Iran, then why should someone hesitate to nuke us?