ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
As we heard earlier in the program, today, B-2s left Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The stealth B-2 is the only plane capable of carrying the bunker-buster bombs that could reach Iran's most well-protected nuclear facility. That is, if the U.S. joins in Israel's strikes against Iran, which President Trump says he is considering. Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a stark warning this week about the danger of attacks on nuclear sites.
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RAFAEL MARIANO GROSSI: Nuclear installations are coming under fire, and nuclear safety is being compromised.
LIMBONG: Nuclear safety is being compromised. So what is the risk to nuclear safety in a war zone? Joining us to discuss this is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Hey, Geoff.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi there.
LIMBONG: All right, so first of all, a lot of the news this week has been focused on one of Iran's main nuclear sites called Fordo. It's located inside a mountain, and the thinking is that the only way to strike it would be with a U.S. bunker-buster bomb. But what would happen if America dropped such a bomb on Fordo?
BRUMFIEL: Well, it's not clear what would happen, to be honest with you. It would probably take several bombs to get through the mountain. And if they could, there might be a breach, but it would not trigger a nuclear explosion. Now, it is true Iran stores highly enriched uranium in Fordo, but it's stored as a gas. That means that there's no way for it to achieve that runaway nuclear chain reaction.
LIMBONG: But let's assume that the bunker buster got through, and then the, you know, gas canisters were ruptured. What would the risks there be?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, there would be some risks. My colleague Nell Greenfieldboyce spoke to Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Here's what she said.
EMILY CAFFREY: The first thing I like to tell people about uranium is that it is more chemically toxic than it is radiologically toxic.
BRUMFIEL: And that she means is that uranium is radioactive - that's true - but first and foremost, it's a heavy metal, and that means it can make you really sick if you ingest it. Now, the other thing to know is that uranium gas is really heavy, so even if one of these canisters gets ruptured, it probably won't go very far.
CAFFREY: How far would the gas travel? The likely answer is probably not off the site boundary because it's - again, it's a big, heavy gas molecule.
BRUMFIEL: So for people living nearby or, you know, even several tens of miles away, like in Tehran, there's very little risk at all. And in fact, the U.N. watchdog did say it thought gas leaked from another site called Natanz after an Israeli bombing, but there's no indication yet of leaks outside that site.
LIMBONG: OK, so you're saying that, you know, this sounds like a local crisis - right? - and maybe workers would have to wear gas masks and hazmat suits. But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has still been sounding this warning very loudly all week. Are there other concerns?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, there are, and that's because there are other nuclear facilities in Iran that carry other risks. So Iran has two operating reactors, a commercial power plant at Bushehr and a research reactor in Tehran. Now, these reactors contain lots of radioactivity, and if either were struck, it could spread a lot of nuclear contamination over a much wider area. So that would be something more akin to Fukushima or Chernobyl. Now, so far, Israel doesn't even appear to have tried to strike those sites, but there are risks there.
LIMBONG: All right. Speaking of Israel, we've been talking about the dangers inside Iran, but are there places to worry about inside of Israel?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, Israel has a nuclear reactor in a place called Dimona. That reactor is part of its nuclear weapons program, and it's conceivable Iran could try and strike that reactor in retaliation for strikes at its nuclear sites. And again, if that were to happen, it could spark a major nuclear crisis. And, you know, I think this is why the U.N. watchdog is so worried. We already have reactors under fire in Ukraine, and now there's this new conflict where there's a lot of nuclear facilities that are at risk in a war zone.
LIMBONG: NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. Thanks so much, Geoff.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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