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You are really in the dark ages, you coward you! The US has a lot to learn from South Africa!

• 1. South Africa has won the Student Cluster Competition at the International Supercomputing Conference twice in a row in 2013 and 2014!
• 2. Amazon EC2 was developed mostly by a team in Cape Town, South Africa led by Chris Pinkham.
• 3. South African's, by virtue of the way they grow up, are much better equiped to deal with the challenges today, it seems, than their US counterparts.
• 4. Even in the old dark days of apartheid, South Africa led the world in nuclear reactor research on a shoestring budget, pioneering the whole pebble-bed reactor concept, and building 7 atomic bombs right under the noses of the world, which gives you a good indication of the South African mentality: "Don't tell us something cannot be done".

There are a great deal more items that can be added to this list, but I doubt it will help you much...

But maybe Mr Coward wasn't born yet at the time and he's still not able to find South Africa on a world map. (Hint: It's somewhere south of Mexico)

Here is what I posted in the "above" I referenced in my first reply to you: http://isis-online.org/risk/tab7
Effective annual radiation due to natural sources in Denver is 11.8 mSv/y

So, let's look at the summary of the article that we're posting on:

In 33 of the districts, or 77 percent of the total, radiation levels were still higher than the government-set standard of one millisievert per year. In areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where decontamination has been carried out on an experimental basis, radiation levels remain 10 to 60 times higher than the official limit.

So, the self-imposed government standard Japan has used to decide whether the areas are safe to inhabit is 1 mSv/y, and 23% of the Fukishima Prefecture are below this, that is 10x lower than Denver. Of the experimentally decontaminated areas near to the plant, they are 10x - 60x higher than the government standard, so anywhere from equal to Denver to 6x what Denver has.

To put this into perspective, this "government standard" they have imposed is actually lower than the average background radiation in Japan (1.4 mSv/y), and less than 1/3 of the average background radiation in the USA (3.1 mSv/y). I don't think they are likely to get massive areas of their land lower than average, just by the laws of statistics, which makes me think the politicians are just fearmongering by setting such a low standard.

So, I've put my numbers and sources down. As I've said, I'm not a fanboy. There was contamination, sure, I'm not denying that. What I'm saying is that the amount, after some decontamination efforts, is small enough that in the big picture, given the amount of energy generated by the plant, it is negligible compared to emissions from coal or chemicals produced during solar panel production. I think nuclear is one of the safest power generation methods we have. We just need to move away from 70s technology and not do stupid things like build them where tsunamis and earthquakes can do a double-wammy, without sufficient safety mechanisms to handle that.

The cleaned areas have a radiation level of 1mS a year. To put that into perspective, people living in Denver get 11.8mS a year from natural sources. This area is NOT uninhabitable. Not that this makes TEPCO any less foolish...

You are the troll. And a very low-value poster. The Guardian link refers to a nano-diamond creation device supplied by Russia for industry, and which "western" intelligence tried to spin as related to weapons research. Here is the thorough debunking from Moon of Alabama. [moonofalabama.org] The "reporting" on nano diamonds was spanked SO BADLY by this blog, that all traces disappeared from press and punditry before November ended.

My posts do tend to have a very low value for perpetuating the lies and distractions used to defend the terrorist sponsoring and would be genocidal Iranian regime. I don't see that as a negative. The MoonbatofAlabama blog didn't really serve much purpose other than to provide another distractions to fool the unwary.

Vyacheslav Danilenko – Background, Research, and Proliferation Concerns

In the debate about the November 11 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards report, some have falsely implied that Vyacheslav Danilenko did not know anything about nuclear weapons, or that he worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career, even though he worked at Chelyabinsk-70 for almost thirty years.1 The open source record demonstrates that these statements are incorrect and that Danilenko was involved in developing and using inwardly converging high pressure explosions and diagnostic systems to measure their effectiveness vital to the development of Soviet nuclear weapons. As such, the open source record supports that when he assisted Iran in the 1990s, he was an ex-Soviet nuclear weapons expert. Given his background, Danilenko should have had reason to believe that his knowledge and expertise related to high explosive compression in nuclear weapons could be misused by the Iranians, even if he limited himself to advising on strictly non-nuclear weapon applications.

In his statement to the IAEA Danilenko denied helping Iran build nuclear weapons but he admitted that he could not exclude that the information he provided was used for other purposes. Despite his denials, the IAEA suspects he helped Iran more than he has admitted so far. . .

Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko’s aid to Iran offers peek at nuclear program

You are the troll. And a very low-value poster. The Guardian link refers to a nano-diamond creation device supplied by Russia for industry, and which "western" intelligence tried to spin as related to weapons research. Here is the thorough debunking from Moon of Alabama. The "reporting" on nano diamonds was spanked SO BADLY by this blog, that all traces disappeared from press and punditry before November ended.

The whole issue is a misrepresentation of the highest order - from 11/11. Let me update you, with an analysis that is independent, not mere military/government stenography. Concerning the IAEA findings more recently, in August of 2012:

IAEA: Iranian "Nuclear Danger" Decreased

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just released its most recent report (GOV/2012/37) on the state of Irans nuclear program.

As usual this report is used to hype up the "nuclear Iran" scare. The London Times even headlines Iran is stockpiling weapons grade uranium, a new reported finds (sic) which is completely false as even its own report below that headline says:

The Israeli diplomat said that Iran was in the process of doubling its capacity at Fordow to about 1,500 centrifuges, increasing the amount of 20 per cent-enriched uranium it could produce. Uranium enriched to 20 per cent fuels Irans main research reactor, but it is also just below the level usable in nuclear bombs.

Not only is any Uranium Iran has below weapons grade but, according to the new IAEA report, Iran has today less enriched Uranium that could quickly be converted into a nuclear weapon than it had in May 2012, the time of the IAEAs last report (GOV/2012/23) on the issue.

Critics of Irans nuclear program are most concerned with the Uranium Iran enriches to a level of 20% U-235 isotope. This enriched Uranium, critics say, could be quickly enriched further to up to 95% and then be used to manufacture a nuclear explosion device.

But enriched Uranium can have several forms. For enrichment natural Uranium is converted into Uranium hexafluoride (UF6) and, slightly heated and under pressure, fed as a gas into centrifuges to separate out the U-238 isotopes. This increases the content of U-235 isotopes needed for nuclear reactions. The enrichment product with 20% U-235 is still in the form of UF6 which could be again fed into a centrifuge cascade for even higher enrichment levels.

But UF6 is not usable as nuclear reactor fuel. For reactor use the UF6 has to be converted into Triuranium oxtoxide (U3O8) and from there into Uranium dioxide UO2. These can be formed into fuel elements to be fed into a reactor. Once this is done there is no easy and quick process to convert these fuel elements back into UF6 for further enrichment. Enriched UF6 once converted into U3O8 and UO2 fuel plates is thereby not directly usable for producing bomb grade uranium and of little proliferation concern.

Iran needs fuel elements with 20% enrichment level for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) to produce nuclear isotopes for medical purposes.

According to the May 2012 IAEA report Iran had, at that time, enriched 110.1 kg 20% enriched UF6 at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) in Natanz and 35.5 kg 20% UF6 in the Fuel Enrichment Plant (F

Since 2002, the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.

presumably you consider this increasing concern to be the result of "strong indications that the nuclear program is peaceful."

Xest, at least you did the work of looking up actual sources. But I don't think you're there yet.

You could look up the piece the consistence that got so much publicity, the detonation chamber in Parchin.
It's not mentioned directly in the actual document you linked to but the document has a reference to an earlier document from nov2011 you can find over here
http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_8Nov2011.pdf
Read items 44 and 45 under C.6. Initiation of high explosives and associated experiments
They actually mention those containers could be used for creation of nanodiamonds, but the emphasis is that this may well be a cover.

Now other sources make mincemeat of the accusation that the Iranians would use the container for developing nuclear triggers and claim the very likely reason for that explosives container is just that, creating nanodiamonds, and this is exactly Danilenko's specialty.
See ex IAEA inspector Robert Kelley here http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/11/ex-inspector-rejects-iaea-iran-bomb-test-chamber-claim/

Now, you have the IAEA demanding access to a military site, to which they normally have no right of access because it's not nuclear, and they can't make a decent case for it. And Iran is not happy to provide access since the IAEA is not being reasonable.

Does that sound anything like what you've heard about the case? To me this looks like building a case from nothing, in multiple steps - first by the IAEA , by casting suspicion while not actually making hard claims, and then by the US and the media, converting the suspicions to plausible guesses..

I'm afraid your post is largely nonsense.

Vyacheslav Danilenko – Background, Research, and Proliferation Concerns

In the debate about the November 11 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards report, some have falsely implied that Vyacheslav Danilenko did not know anything about nuclear weapons, or that he worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career, even though he worked at Chelyabinsk-70 for almost thirty years.1 The open source record demonstrates that these statements are incorrect and that Danilenko was involved in developing and using inwardly converging high pressure explosions and diagnostic systems to measure their effectiveness vital to the development of Soviet nuclear weapons. As such, the open source record supports that when he assisted Iran in the 1990s, he was an ex-Soviet nuclear weapons expert. Given his background, Danilenko should have had reason to believe that his knowledge and expertise related to high explosive compression in nuclear weapons could be misused by the Iranians, even if he limited himself to advising on strictly non-nuclear weapon applications.

Iran Accused of Nuclear Aims

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of documents generated by the IAEA itself, from Iran and from more than 10 member states of the U.N. agency. "All of this information, taken together, gave rise to concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the IAEA report said.. . . .

Officials briefed on the report also said the IAEA believes North Korea is the foreign government named in the report as assisting Tehran in conducting computer modeling of nuclear detonations.

They said a former Russian nuclear scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko, is the official cited in the report as making a string of visits to Tehran from 1996 through 2002 to help Iran develop a high-explosive initiation system, which can be used to trigger a nuclear device. The IAEA said they were told during consultations that this work was for non-nuclear applications

News flash: The U.S. is the only country pushing anti-Iran propaganda down their citizen's throat. The rest of the world does not see Iran as a threat, and actually perceives Israel and America a much bigger threat to the stability of that region. There will be no "multi-national" invasion.

First of all, I said nothing like that in my post, other than when I used the word "Iran" talking about something completely different. But anyway, you are wrong.

Iran is heavily involved in trafficking of ballistic missile technology and nuclear technology with North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, which ALL other nations see as an extreme proliferation risk. If you read skimmed through any of the diplomatic cables, you would see that an ENORMOUS number of them deal with proliferation issues around the world that affect international interests. Iran is also an enormous supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas and their shah-lead dictatorship is openly hostile to the Western world (rightly so since liberalization weakens their grip on power.) If you think the majority of the countries of the world have friendly relations with Iran, you are very, very mistaken. Iran is recognized as a concrete threat to the greater international community, but the cost to do anything about them is very high. The problem is, our entire global civilization revolves around oil, and nobody wants to fuck with the oil supply unless they really have to. This is the case whether you are talking about sanctions or whether you are talking about an invasion disrupting the oil flow for some years. Here's a recent article from The Economist:

France has led the way in offering European Union support, recalling its ambassador for consultations in Paris (in common with several other EU countries), and calling for a new sanction barring EU countries from buying Iranian oil. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Thursday there was much talk of solidarity, but no agreement on boycotting Iranian oil. Spain and Italy had grumbled at the level of diplomats in working groups that they would need more time to find alternative sources of energy. Greece, which is heavily reliant on Iranian oil because few other suppliers are willing to supply a country on the brink of bankruptcy, blocked a boycott. A report on the EUObserver news website quotes unnamed diplomats saying that some other countries were also hiding behind Greece, saying "People don't say it out loud. But there is an understanding oil sanctions would hurt the EU rather than hitting Iran where it hurts and would make oil cheaper for China."

The IAEA recently released a report concluding that Iran was actively involved in nuclear weapons research and development. Don't let the calm wording of the report fool you, this is a big deal for the IAEA to come out and say. The IAEA has often stymied US efforts in the past to get viable sanctions against Iran, because the IAEA is extremely impartial, and they never make assumptions or report findings without extremely strong evidence. They have a very long history of not kowtowing to the greater powers, such as the US.

This isn't propaganda against Iran just because these reasons may justify a later war. When you get down to it, this is a country that gives enormous support to real, actual terrorists and openly subverts attempts by the international community to contain its nuclear weapons research and conventional weapons proliferation. If you truly believe only the US cares about this, then you should asking your government WHY they aren't doing more. Thankfully, however, your world view is incorrect and the international community actually is interested in containing Iran and the huge proliferation risk they pose to the world at large.

What happened in Japan was very different. The technicians were very poorly trained. Several of them did not have enough formal schooling, or even enough to know that the nuclear material suddenly "glowing" was a Very Bad Thing.

They were also mixing in the wrong tank, one specifically not designed for mixing radioactive elements. They were supposed to be using a special tank that was formed to prevent a critical mass from forming, but it was too awkward to use and they were under time constraints and were using a different container.

Unfortunately, this particular container was surrounded by a layer of water which bounced the neutrons back into the mixture and helped it go critical. All in all, a very, very stupid thing to do.

For anyone interested in reading more on this, there is a great timeline of what the public was told (and weren't told available here:

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/tokai.html

Briefly looking through the page, it looks like the solution went critical (there was an ongoing uncontrollable chain reaction) from Sep 30th, 1999 through the 31st and was eventually stopped early on Oct 1st. They had an ongoing chain reaction for well over 24 hours and you can see from the timeline how long it took for the public to be informed...

Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

That's right, a 1994/1995 agreement. Clinton in office again. But you'd rather blame Bush through Rumsfeld.

Oh and you know from personal experience that all directors on a company's BoD knows all about what is going on? News flash: A large portion of them sit there for the money and don't give a rat's ass what happens otherwise. What you fail to note is that the company was a European engineering giant based in Zurich. Also:

The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west. ...In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".

So there was no vote, and the directors were not told they were selling nuclear reactors, despite the headline.

2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil"
So what? Are you unaware of NK's actions over the preceeding two decades? Clearly. It isn't like Bush pulled the idea that NK was bad out of his ass. Do somethign intelligent, do real research. Did you know NK ha dbeen on the list of terroist sponsoring and aiding states fo ryears prior to 2000, let alone 2002?

Educate youself:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen cited North Korea as "the most significant near-term danger" in Asia in his 2000 annual defense report submitted to U.S. President Clinton and Congress. The report focused on the Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile threat and the possibility that the missile could strike most parts of the United States.

-- http://www.isis-online.org/publications/dprk/book/ chronology3.html#0200

Because of their dedication to spreading nuclear and chemical technology and pursuing a nuclear weapons program on top of it. One that predates Bush by nearly a decade. China isn't too happy about NK and it's nuke program either. They are concerned that it will trigger Japan to develop their own, or SK to allow US nukes back in.

2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state

Every wonder why or just assume you know the intimate details of the goings on?

2005

14 January: North Korea says it is willing to restart stalled talks on its nuclear programme, according to the official KCNA news agency.

19 January: Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush's nominee as secretary of state, identifies North Korea as one of six "outposts of tyranny" where the US must help bring freedom.

10 February: North Korea says it is suspending its participation in the talks over its nuclear programme for an "indefinite period", blaming the Bush administration's intention to "antagonise, isolate and stifle it at any cost". The statement also repeats North Korea's assertion to have built nuclear weapons for self-defence.

18 April: South Korea says North Korea has shut down its Yon

A heavy water plant is not a nuclear reactor. Nothing in a heavy water plant is radioactive. Or, for most processes, even toxic. Here's a tutorial on heavy water plants. They're not very complicated or especially large. This is the easy step in the process.

The next step is a nuclear reactor fueled with natural uranium and moderated with heavy water, which can be used, with difficulty, to produce plutonium. This is the route Pakistan took. Here's Pakistan's heavy water plant and its companion nuclear reactor. Israel's Dimona reactor is also of this type. So this is the standard route to nuclear weapons for small countries. This step is much harder and riskier, but the technology is half a century old.

There are other approaches. The United States initially used water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors fueled with natural uranium for plutonium production, as did Russia. Britain used air-cooled graphite-moderated reactors. (Bad idea. The Windscale reactor had a fire in 1957, releasing a considerable amount of radioactive material.) Once both countries had uranium-enrichment capability, newer reactors mostly used low-grade enriched uranium. Both the US and the USSR got so good at plutonium production that both now have tons (literally) of the stuff in storage, in addition to the weapons using it. A nuclear weapon requires about 5Kg.

A heavy water plant is not a nuclear reactor. Nothing in a heavy water plant is radioactive. Or, for most processes, even toxic. Here's a tutorial on heavy water plants. They're not very complicated or especially large. This is the easy step in the process.

The next step is a nuclear reactor fueled with natural uranium and moderated with heavy water, which can be used, with difficulty, to produce plutonium. This is the route Pakistan took. Here's Pakistan's heavy water plant and its companion nuclear reactor. Israel's Dimona reactor is also of this type. So this is the standard route to nuclear weapons for small countries. This step is much harder and riskier, but the technology is half a century old.

There are other approaches. The United States initially used water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors fueled with natural uranium for plutonium production, as did Russia. Britain used air-cooled graphite-moderated reactors. (Bad idea. The Windscale reactor had a fire in 1957, releasing a considerable amount of radioactive material.) Once both countries had uranium-enrichment capability, newer reactors mostly used low-grade enriched uranium. Both the US and the USSR got so good at plutonium production that both now have tons (literally) of the stuff in storage, in addition to the weapons using it. A nuclear weapon requires about 5Kg.

Let's not forget more than $100 bucks per vote can get spend by one side on a campaign.

And this is just the elections part of the democratic system, all in all a relatively minor part. (Iraq has plenty of elections)

Lets not forget that the New York Times sat on this very story *for a year* at the request of the white house. Incidentally, this was an election year. (In Iraq you have to pay to decide what gets printed)

The New York Times is the paper that kept Judy miller on the WMD issue after her articles started making less and less sense to experts. The experts complained to the point of getting articles adding nuance to her stories but ignoring most criticism. (Her name later popped up in plamegate (where her jailtime postponed the investigation) and in Rendon group stories).

A democracy can be defined as a system of government where the people can have a meaningful say in they way the country is run. Can you have a meaningful say if you think Cheney just brings Bush fresh pretzels while Bush runs the world?
Can you have a meaningful say if you think the only decisions to be made are pro/con gay marriage and pro/con terrr?

I can think of Weapons proliferation, air pollution killing people directly, air pollution killing our children's children through climate change, the dollar plummeting, oil running out, china becoming a real superpower (which Lockheed martin can do nothing about, despite being the biggest reason the US government points to China), Russia becoming an autocracy (Which Cheney may want to prevent by siding with the Beslan school siege guys... I kid you not!) So what is US TV news reporting on these issues? Any public debate going on?

I would say that the American public didn't know that by electing bush, who looks very handsome when he cuts down trees or rides a mountain bike, that they would get the whole shamrock, Iran contra and PNAC involved Halliburton brand neocon fun pack (now, with free K-street project Abramoff and hookergate). (All of these things pre-date the first Bush election and are the kind of thing one might reasonably look at when deciding trustworthiness)

Lets not forget that Cheney does things intentionally without changing the law because he wants to use 9/11 to re-establish executive power that in his cold war mind has been dangerously taken away by that vicious congress... no really, congress. The people who split up the WMD investigation in a "did the CIA do all of it" part and a "Was the Mushroom cloud part a minor misunderstanding that ended overdoing it a bit or a honest mistake" part. (We are still waiting for the last part.)

But hey, this is just what the European papers make of the story....

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

Even a centrifuge to enrich uranium!

Yet I saw Putin say

Look, I've provided two links from reputable sources on what the Russian intelligence agencies thought. The count is 2 me, 0 you. Time for you to catch up, instead of saying "I saw Putin say...".

The US and British were falsely accused of this

Falsely? Time after time they spouted bogus information, and were told by the rest of the world that it was nonsense. And in most cases, it comes out that a good portion of our intelligence community thought it was bogus as well (for example, this - a must read; here's another which describes how the aluminum tubes claim really came from a small handful of analysts who were hotly disputed by the DOE, let alone the IAEA and Europe). And yet, the administration went on TV every day and made these claims, referred to rock-solid sources, claimed that there was no other explanation, and rewrote report after report to remove conditional and couched statements.

It's not "falsely accused". You seriously need to read how each of the claims got started, and how each of the reports got rewritten. They *deliberately* did this. It's not singly Bush's fault, mind you. It's the fact that he pack each agency's top with people who believed as he did, and each step that information took along its way, the originally plentiful caveats and doubts were dropped. Then the administration took those reports, and played them up still further to the public, who had no grip on the basics of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

By the way, I assume that you accept by now the fact that German intelligence tried to warn the US off bogus information several times, only to have the US not only use it, but proclaim it as coming from rock-solid sources and be nails in the coffin for their case for war.

This displays the quintessential revolutionist attitude

How the heck can you possibly claim that I'm revising my own beliefs, when you don't even know me? If you doubt me, check my website, and look at the news page for Iraq. Also check out this particular page, section 7. The site has hardly been updated since the war, so it's pretty much a time capsule. Note that this was from 2002; my views, as with those of Europe, further solidified as time went on and the war approached.

In short, quit calling me a revisionist historian when you don't even know what the heck I believed at the time. I damn well know what I believed, and have documentation to prove it. These viewpoints, while rare in the US due to the god-awful job of the US media, were incredibly common in Europe; the editorials and letters to the editor in European papers from the time easily hold this out (need cites?).

How the heck can you even dream of calling this "revisionist history"? Have you never heard the name "Scott Ritter"? Did you completely forget what he was saying, and how Europe and America's antiwar population wholeheartedly agreed with him? Did you never read IAEA and UNMOVIC reports (as opposed to a US media summary of them, which were horribly cherry picked and distorted)? I'll cite plenty for you if you'd like.

Adapting an old Mig, with the aid of duct tape

No, no, no. Not "adapting an old Mig". The entire plane's structure was like something a teenager would build for a hobby. They have a picture - check it out!. This was the device that Bush tried to convince Americans was going to cross the ocean and spray deadly gas on us. Lets give some of its finer points, shall we?

* Wings made of plyboard
* Body made from an old fuel tank
* Propeller made of wood
* Held together with foil and duct tape

This is the North Korean nuclear site at Yongbyon, DPRK where they produced their plutonium. Look here for an explanation which building is which.

Tell China if they don't reign in North Korea and make them get rid of their nukes, we'll just have to help Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan get nukes too. That'd get Chinese attention because it would flush Chinese dreams of dominating East Asia for the next century down the tubes really quick.

After all, the US stopped Taiwan from developing their own nukes in the 1980s - the Red Chinese owe us.

Nuclear tests are now conducted underground. Above ground testing was banned by the UN decades ago and any country who has nuclear weapons has always tested them below ground. The exception being Israel who was testing its nuclear weapons with South Africa when sanctions were on South Africa for its apartheid policies.

No known large-scale tests were evidenced but there is some evidence to support small tests as seismic data indicated unusual earthquake-like motion.

As far as seismic data is concerned with North Korea, since they gave their info to Pakistan, who successfully set off at least one nuclear device, it would be reasonable to assume that North Korea knows its design will work.

Here are some links which show the before and after photos of Pakistans underground nuclear tests:

Link 1
Link 2

This link has a very nice and detailed story, with pics, about Indias nuclear tests as does this link.

In the case of Indias tests, there were some clouds thrown up but nothing near like one is used to seeing from the nuclear tests the U.S. performed in the Nevada desert.

practical tests have shown that reactor grade plutonium, with all its isotopes, can be still be used to make one. It will be dirty, it will have a lower yield, it will use more plutonium, it will still explode.

1. The spontaneous fission rate listed for PWR plutonium by your first reference is more than twelve times as high as weapons-grade. This makes the requirements for the implosion mechanism more than 100 times as steep (12 times the implosion velocity means 144 times the kinetic energy).
2. It's actually worse than that. The isotope abundances listed by your reference reflect a slightly lower burnup than the 33,000 megawatt-days/ton listed for mine. I understand that current PWR practice is to use a burnup of 50,000 MW-d/t or more, which would make the isotope composition even worse for the hypothetical proliferator.
3. There's more to a bomb than just the fission elements. The implosion mechanism has to work correctly and not pre-trigger, and the more heat and radiation emitted by the "pit" the more stress it's going to put on the explosive mechanism. Your bomb is not going to work if the explosive lenses have turned to jelly, and it's going to be mighty hard to hide a bomb if it requires a huge cooling system to avoid melting itself.

Add to this the niggling detail that we are talking about a US nuclear program, we'd be keeping the stuff within our borders, and the US could easily add a bit of some nasty isotope to any recovered fissonables to make diversion both difficult to do and easy to detect. That makes it a non-issue.

you could (with some slight of hand) swap some unspent pellets for spent pellets, and process the spent pellets yourself for plutonium.

If that's so easy, why has every proliferator thus far taken another route?

Separating plutonium from uranium is a reasonably easy chemical process.

Bomb makers get rid of this problem by very short irradiation of a depleted uranium element; if the Pu-239 is not allowed to build up it cannot be transmuted. On the other hand, building up fuel is the purpose of a power-producing breeder reactor.

An excellent summary with a table of typical isotopic compositions for weapons-grade Pu and spent reactor fuel is here. It was the first hit I got with the search string "PWR fuel plutonium isotopes" in Google; what's your excuse?

For those of us paying attention, this isn't news. Here is an article from March, 2003. I saw stories about this in 2002 (and I believe that is what this article means when it says "The administration was forced to admit publicly that dissenters exist"; they don't specify the time frame, but just prior they talked about 2002), but I'm not going to spend the time to dig up a source. I believe it was in early December, but it might have been earlier. LexisNexis it yourself if you even care.

The point of this article is to take a more in-depth look at how that decision was made (it is something like 15 pages).

Nice links, by the way. Have anything demonstrating that Iraq still had WMD, because none of those do. Of course, it would be pretty hard to show they had weapons of mass destruction WHEN THEY DIDN'T!

You're wrong. Do a bit of web browsing about the threat of nuclear terrorism sometime. Try this paper for a start. What you're missing is that there is another critical factor determining the efficiency -- for what time period the assembly is critical. A group with limited resources trying to build a nuclear bomb for the first time is likely to aim for a device with a minimum of technical sophistication. This means one of two designs, corresponding to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One was the "gun design," so named because a slug of uranium is shot into another subcritical mass of uranium. The other is the "implosion design," where a hollow sphere of plutonium is surrounded by shaped charges of convential explosive, which when detonated compress the plutonium into a super-critical density. The problem with these designs is that if you do a shoddy job building the thing, the nuclear chain reaction will take off when the fissionable material is only partway to the final "assembled" state. Then most likely the nuclear explosion blasts the parts back apart before they ever reach the final assembled state, and this flying apart of the material makes things subcritical again before much of the nuclear energy is released. This can lead to arbitrarily small yields. This is particularly likely (or maybe almost inevitable) if a bomb is built with the less-refined "reactor grade" materials as opposed to the more-refined "weapons grade" materials. The less-refined material has a far greater proportion of undesirable isotopes which randomly decay releasing extra neutrons which will start the chain reaction before the optimal stage of assembly.

explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.

Actually that story does nothing of the sort. Oh sure, it ridicules some of the evidence, but it neither denies the existence of the tubes nor provides an alternative, innocent use for them.

A much more even-handed story is this one, which goes into considerable detail about the Iraqi centrifuge program and also details some other possible (but still weapons-related) uses for the tubing.