Houston G. Wood III

Houston G. Wood III is an American mathematician and physicist. His field of work is fluid dynamics.

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Houston G. Wood worked in gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment since 1967 in the Centrifuge Development Department at Oak Ridge National Laboratory , which he directed from 1979 to 1981. He also works on research on the artificial heart and is active in the field of nuclear non-proliferation.

In 1981 he followed a call to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville , where he has held the chair for mechanics and aerospace engineering since 2004 .

Iraqi aluminum tubes

He achieved notoriety outside of the professional world in the run-up to the second American Iraq war , when the American government compiled the reasons for the attack on Iraq under international law. From the point of view of some international lawyers, it was sufficient as a reason for war that there were doubts about Iraq's good conduct with regard to ABC weapons . The USA adopted this view after the attempt to obtain a Security Council resolution had failed and the United Nations did not consent to an attack.

When an Iraqi attempt to procure aluminum tubes for rocket construction was thwarted, it was decided to examine whether the tubes should actually be used for the production of enrichment centrifuges . The Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggested that Wood be appointed head of the investigative committee.

The result was clear.

• Aluminum tubes have actually not been used for this purpose since the 1950s , because with high-strength steels or composite materials one and a half times to twice as high speeds can be achieved with correspondingly higher yields.
• The confiscated aluminum tubes were anodized . This coating should have been removed before it could have been used for uranium enrichment. After that, however, the wall thicknesses of the tubes would have been too weak for meaningful use in enrichment centrifuges.

Web links

• His website at the University of Virginia