Ambient office = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 143 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Part 4 of 4 Parts, (Please read Parts 1, 2 and 3 first)
     Nuclear weapons advocates believe that the U.S. should retain dedicated nuclear bunker buster in order to destroy very deep targets. Former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz spoke on this topic at an event in 2014 at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C. He said that the guidance package on the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb would make it easier to target hardened structures very deep underground. The B61-12’s dial-a-yield feature and tail kit could remove the need for dedicated earth-penetrating or large-yield nukes like the specially designed bunker-busting B61-11 and more powerful B83-1.
     Following the collapse of its nuclear deals with other world powers in 2018, Iran has been enhancing its underground nuclear facilities and rapidly advancing its nuclear program in recent years. Iran is now producing enriched uranium close to weapons grade levels. Inspectors recently discovered that Iran had produced uranium particles that were about eighty four percent pure U-235 at the Fordo fuel enrichment plant. This is far above the sixty percent figure claimed by Iran. It is very close to the ninety percent threshold for weapons-grade uranium.
     Corinne Kitsell and Götz Schmidt-Bremme are the British and German ambassadors to the IAEA nuclear watchdog respectively. They said, “The full range of findings outlined by the Director General’s report are alarming: Iran continues its unprecedented and grave nuclear escalation.”
     According to the head of the IAEA, Iran has sufficient enriched uranium to construct “several” nuclear bombs as of February of this year. All in all, the latest satellite images of Iran’s underground tunnels in the Zagros mountains underscores the U.S. military’s requirement for MOPs, as well as efforts by its adversaries to mitigate the capabilities of those weapons.
     Since the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) for the monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program, there have been ongoing efforts to either restore the JCPA or create a new program to prevent Iran from creating its own nuclear arsenal. Negotiations with Iran over a new nuclear deal have had their ups and downs since the U.S. pulled out of the deal. Currently, the European powers in the original JCPA, have encouraged and even pressured the U.S. to come to terms with Iran. In the meantime, Iran has been resisting and violating some of the IAEA monitoring programs still in place.
     Given the missiles that could reach Israel and the continued belligerent statements against Israel from the Iranian government, Israel has repeatedly said that they would never allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. They have said that they will attack Iran if that appears to be imminent, regardless of whether the U.S. approves and joins the attack. Hopefully, some sort of deal can be reached with Iran to halt its progress towards nuclear weapons before there is a need for the bunker busters in the U.S. arsenal.

Ambient office = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 147 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Part 3 of 4 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
     A large number of MOPs would be needed if the U.S. military were to attack the underground tunnel networks at the Natanz site because of how widely spread out these facilities appear to be. These facilities are now designed in sections with blast doors separating key sections. This means that if one area is hit, the other areas will not be impacted, or the damage will be drastically reduced to the entire facility.
      Information is limited with respect to how many MOPs the Air Force has in its stockpile. Records show that twenty MOPs have been delivered by Boeing to the Air Force up to 2015. Additional MOPs have probably been delivered since then. This would include the GBU-57E/B variant, in operational inventory since 2016, and possibly the newest GBU-57F/B variant.
     The MOP has been progressively improved over the years. There is no report on how many of the older variants have been retrofitted with modifications developed through the Enhanced Threat Response-IV and other upgrade programs.
     It is also possible that the Air Force’s bunker busters may be able individually penetrate deeper below the ground than the Air Force has publicly admitted to date. Originally, the Air Force claimed that its MOPs could burrow down just sixty feet to destroy their targets. In 2007, this depth was adjusted to two hundred feet. It is likely that newer MOP variants, including the GBU-57E/B and GBU-57F/B, can reach a greater depth than the MOP variants available in 2007. The BLU-127C/B warhead has a “booster” in the front of the warhead. It is not clear if this constitutes a system to propel the section for added penetration or if it refers to an explosive charge accelerating the detonation of the main charge.
     Other clusters of bunker busters could also be dropped on the known entry points of the underground facilities such as those in the Zagros Mountains. This maneuver could at least seal off the underground facilities temporarily. The GBU-57/B constitutes the largest bunker buster in the U.S.’s inventory. Smaller bunker busters such as the two-thousand-pound class BLU-109/Bs or BLU-137/Bs or five-thousand pound class GBU-28/Bs or GBU-72/Bs, or even GBU-57/Bs could be used for this purpose.
     There are other ways to attack these facilities but with varying potential and risks. Deep penetrating, high risk commando raids on the ground could be used in an attempt to capture or severely damage nuclear development facilities. Cyber-attacks have been used in the past to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. However, these approaches would find it difficult to do serious physical damage to the facilities. There has even been discussion of irradiating the facilities and the land around them in order to deny access and use. Finally, nuclear warheads are the best bunker busters on Earth.
Please read Part 4 next

Ambient office = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 4 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
      Steven De La Fuente is a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He said, “So the depth of the facility [in the mountain] is a concern because it would be much harder for us [the U.S., to penetrate]. It would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as like a typical bunker buster bomb.”
     Analyzing a separate set of satellite images, analysts at the James Martin Center suggest that four separate entrances have been dug into the mountainside. Two of those entrances are located to the east and the other two are located to the west. These entrances are about twenty feet wide and twenty feet tall.
      Kelsey Davenport is the director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association. She said that the completion of the underground nuclear site in the mountainside “would be a nightmare scenario that risks igniting a new escalatory spiral… Given how close Iran is to a bomb, it has very little room to ratchet up its program without tripping U.S. and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the risk of conflict.”
     The tunnel network near the Natanz site is not the only underground facility that is beyond the reported reach of the U.S. MOPs. Iran’s nuclear development site carved deep into a mountain at Fordo is reported to be almost three hundred feet deep. It is also covered by multiple feet of reinforced concrete. In 2012, experts reported how Fordo then represented a more significant challenge to penetration when compared to the previous underground facilities at Natanz.
     This situation raises questions about how the U.S. military might be able to use its bunker busters against these deeper underground facilities. The Air Force has said very little about the MOP program in general. However, much of its impetus in the early 2000s appeared to be response to Iran work to bury its nuclear enrichment infrastructures underground in order to protect them against preemptive U.S. or Israeli attacks.
     U.S. bunker busters are guided to their target by GPS. It is certainly possible that multiple bunker busters could be dropped close to the same spot by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. B-2s are currently the only aircraft in the U.S. arsenal able to carry and drop the MOPs. The Air Force’s future B-21 Raider stealth bombers is reportedly able to carry one MOP while the B-2 can carry two.
     The BLU-127C/B warhead is the main explosive charge at the core of the GBU-57E/B variant MOP. The U.S. Air Force has released statements that the “inert” version of the BLU-127C/B warhead could be used to “dig down” to the target, softening the ground. Live versions of the warhead could be used for this purpose as well. In the case of the tunnels inside the Zagros Mountains, the ground would probably be very dense. Each subsequent bomb that was dropped would be able to penetrate deeper to the target. This would include weakening any reinforced concrete layers. There is also the possibility of weak points in the facility’s design and mechanical infrastructure that could be exploited to increase penetration to the target.
Please read Part 3 next

Ambient office = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 74 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour