Nuclear Iran

[StrangeSox]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

[kapkomet]

This thread is pretty funny. Substitute a few words here and there and this is the health care bulls*** all over again, except now you all are taking opposite positions between government/national interests and the interests of the individual. Hilarious the hypocracy.

[lostfan]

Hopefully you have some Ben-Gay handy in case you pull a muscle after that stretch you just made.

[Rex Kickass]

The rest of the world is/was 99.999% sure Israel has the bomb. That's still a good deterrent.

 

In fact, you could make the argument that the reason that Saddam Hussein pretended to have a moribund WMD program working after Desert Storm in 1991 was for deterrent reasons. The soviets used vapor ware bomb systems constantly to exert influence, and it can work well if properly managed.

[kapkomet]

Hopefully you have some Ben-Gay handy in case you pull a muscle after that stretch you just made.

 

 

Read it again - the same people who are b****ing about US government interferences on the rest of the world want this health care plan -- or even more.

 

It's humorous, actually.

[StrangeSox]

hey kap does the US government have authority over US citizens, US tax law and US law in general?

[Balta1701]

Read it again - the same people who are b****ing about US government interferences on the rest of the world want this health care plan -- or even more.

 

It's humorous, actually.

Where was I b****ing about U.S. government interference? I was defending it.

[Balta1701]

Bush noted Russia's announcement that it would ship nuclear fuel to Iran's first atomic power station, the unfinished Bushehr plant, and said such deliveries further reduced Tehran's need to enrich uranium.

 

"If that's the case, if the Russians are willing to do that -- which I support -- then the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich. If the Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there's no need for them to learn how to enrich," he said.

Couple year old link.

 

Light-water reactors are designed for commercial use and can run for years at a time on a single batch of fuel. ("Light water" refers to ordinary H2O; "heavy water" has a higher percentage of deuterium atoms, i.e. hydrogen atoms with an extra neutron.) That long burn fills out the plutonium by-product with other isotopes that make it less useful for nuclear weapons. If you shut down a light-water reactor early—after a few months, for example—you'd waste a huge amount of money.

Advertisement

 

Furthermore, it would be very easy to tell when the Iranians or North Koreans shut down their light-water reactors. To extract the fuel rods, you have to lift off a giant lid at the top of the reactor and take them out all at once. Weapons inspectors love this feature because it requires a large-scale operation that's almost impossible to conceal.

More useful knowledge.

[Balta1701]

This thread is pretty funny. Substitute a few words here and there and this is the health care bulls*** all over again, except now you all are taking opposite positions between government/national interests and the interests of the individual. Hilarious the hypocracy.

I just realized that there was more to this post than I thought at 9:00 a.m.

 

So Kap...which side do you support...Iran's right to a nuclear weapon unencumbered by the rest of the world, or the individual mandate?

[StrangeSox]

Hey Balta I already said that!

 

Scheduled refueling outages in the US occur every 18 to 24 months and typically last 30-60 days. You have to shut down the entire plant to get at the fuel. It just isn't practical to sneak it out unless their is collusion with the Russians when removing fuel. The Iranian plant uses a Pressurized Water Reactor which is similar in design and output to many US reactors, so I would imagine their refueling schedules would be the same.

 

edit: The problem comes if Iran gets this plant operational and then backs out of the NPT. Then they'll be able to cycle and enrich the fuel in the reactor at will.

Edited August 18, 2010 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

On another point...yesterday there was discussion over whether any country that had the bomb had been invaded. I have come up with another example; the United Kingdom had a portion of its territory invaded in the early 1980's; the Falklands War.

 

Thinking about that war also made me realize what a benefit it was to have the NPT in existence...such that multiple countries in South America had not by that time gone nuclear...because it wouldn't have been a very good thing for the world if one of those Exocets that hit the Royal Navy was armed with a nuclear warhead rather than a conventional one.