What happens when you bomb a uranium enrichment site?

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All eyes have been on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities this week. The targets of an attack on Saturday by the United States. Marnie Chesterton asks Professor Simon Middleburgh, nuclear materials scientist at the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University what the impact could have been.

As the first images are revealed from the world’s most powerful optical telescope, Professor Chris Lintott brings us news of how you can get involved in scouring the depths of the universe. Caroline Steel brings us the science news that has scientists excited this week, and Marnie visits the first new dinosaur to go on show at London’s Natural History Museum for more than a decade.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Dan Welsh, Jonathan Blackwell & Clare Salisbury Editor: Glyn Tansley Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.
0:06.0	In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist who died having rejected chemotherapy.
0:13.0	It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.
0:19.0	How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?
0:24.8	The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land.
0:27.9	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:35.0	This is the podcast of BBC Inside Science, first broadcast on the 26th of June 2025.
0:42.5	Hello, what happens when you bomb a nuclear site?
0:46.0	We'll be digging into the science behind the news.
0:48.4	Plus, I meet a new species of dinosaur and several million new galaxies.
0:53.6	Chris Lintot joins us to talk about the first findings
0:56.1	from the most advanced telescope on the planet. And joining me in the studio to present the best of
1:01.8	this week's newest science in tapas form is BBC science journalist Caroline Steele. Hello Caroline.
1:07.6	Hi, Marnie. Thanks for having me on. Pleasure. Do you want to give us an appetiser
1:11.1	of what's coming up? Yeah, so I'm going to chat about mice with two dads that have had babies of
1:16.3	their own, how to turn plastic bottles into paracetamol, and garden snails are now venomous. Great. First,
1:25.2	though, all eyes are on the nuclear sites in Iran, hit by US airstrikes earlier in the week, as the world tries to work out what damage has been done.
1:34.9	The International Atomic Energy Agency said the attacks were deeply concerning. Concerning in what way, though?
1:42.8	What actually happens when you bomb a uranium enrichment site?
1:47.3	Professor Simon Middleborough is a nuclear materials scientist at the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University.
1:54.8	Hello, Simon.
	...

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