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Iranian Heavy Water Nuke Plant Goes Online Today
avtchillsboro writes "According to an article in the NYT, an Iranian heavy water nuke plant goes online today. From the article: 'An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The announcement comes days before Thursday's U.N. deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment — which also can be used to create nuclear weapons — or face economic and political sanctions.'"
I think they're just goading the Israelis to take out the facility, gain more support in the Arab world, and rid themselves of the problem while they secretly create a more clandestine program.
With Israel a known (suspected within 99.999%) holder of nukes, Iran sees themselves as the logical counterpoint. They do mean to make weapons, of this I have no doubt.
Peaceful purposes? The iranian prez has said Israel should be wiped off the map. He doesn't strike me as a man with peaceful intentions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One quote that might interest people from the interview is this:
Mohammad Saeidi is a practical man. Sidestepping the political, ideological and historical aspects of the nuclear dispute with the West, the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation is focused on a set of problems that must be solved logically if the country and its people are to develop to their full potential. "The country's oil and gas reserves will last a maximum of another 25 or 30 years," he says. "Therefore we have to provide other resources."
If you are an American, please don't support your current administrations drive to cause yet another war by believing their propaganda about Iran. Really, you should trust your politicians as soon as they find the WMD that they told you existed in Iraq.
Please don't let Bush plunge the world into the Realm of $200 a barrel oil prices by attacking Iran.
Naive of me, but did anyone RTFA? It says that Iran can now produce heavy water, not that they have a nuclear reactor. FFS, I thought the NYT had higher standards of journalistic integrity than to use a misleading headline.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It is my understanding that Iran would like to build a uranium nuclear device. While these are impressive--and definitely make a big boom--they are not nearly as deadly or frightening as a plutonium nuclear device. The reason? Deliverability. While a plutonium nuclear explosive can be squeezed down to a pretty small size (to fit on the tip of a cruise missile, for example), a uranium device has to be pretty massive.
Essentially, while a plutonium device is a ball of plutonium surrounded by concentric spheres of perfectly timed explosives, a uranium device is the equivalent of a 5-inch diameter gun which fires a uranium slug at a uranium target. The advantage of a plutonium device is obvious: it's small. The disadvantage of a plutonium device is the fact that it's very, very difficult to get the timing right so that you don't incinerate the plutonium before it goes critical. Meanwhile, a uranium device is dirt-simple to develop once you have the material. However, these things are huge. So huge, in fact, that you need something the size of a B29 in order to deliver it. We're talking several tons here.
Incidentally, the US developed one of each during the Manhattan Project, culminating in the two dropped bombs: Little Boy and Fat Man (no prizes for guessing which is which). While the Plutonium devices needed to be tested to make sure it worked, the scientists didn't even bother to test a uranium explosive at full scale. They just dropped the sucker.
Basically, this boils down to a pretty simple reality: even if Iran develops a uranium device, they can't deliver it. They can't put it on a missile, and I think it's a 100% certainty that Israel (or anyone else, for that matter, though Israel is the most likely target) would shoot down anything the size of a B29 flying in from Iran. If I had to guess, I'd wager that's why the Bush administration doesn't seem terribly worried about Iran. North Korea is a different matter, but Iran just isn't as big of a threat as everyone seems to be making it out to be.
And as an aside, it's certainly tempting to say "well, they could just put it on a boat and hide it and float it to a port and explode it." However, there are a couple of problems. First of all, each nuclear device that Iran develops will be a sort of force-multiplier for its power in the region. So if it develops--say--three devices, that means that losing just one is going to be a dramatic blow to its power. If you say that there's a 50/50 chance that the device will actually make it to its target, there's just no way to rationalize that risk. Much better to use the threat as leverage. The Iranian leaders don't subscribe to Western modes of thought, but they're aren't utterly irrational.
LR
Don't underestimate Israel's ability to do what they feel is neccessary to keep themselves safe.
Sounds like Pakistan.. Oh wait, the US doesn't mind Pakistan having Nuclear weapons because they are an ally.. A religious fanatic ally harboring terrorists, but an ally.
Mossad: "Let's ignore international law and destroy their nukes."
Delta Force: "Let's ignore international law and steal their oil."
SAS: "Why are there no fucking pubs in this bloody desert?"
Eh? Heavy water is used in hundreds of modern fission nuclear reactors around the world--it acts as a moderator for the fission reaction.
Wrong. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor - sure, you don't generate the power from the heavy water itself, but it's needed for that kind of reactor. Together with uranium, which, surprise, they also are building an enrichment plant for.
While I do not completely trust this enterprise to be peaceful, I don't trust the U.S., Israel, the U.K., Russia or any of the other countries that already *have* nuclear weapons, and in the case of the U.S. have used them. Until the nuclear weapon carrying countries that already exists have dismantled their last bombs and missiles, I'll continue finding their cries about others building research facilities or nuclear plants very hypocritical.
Well, at least this time the evidence is somewhat better than the "Oh, oh, they've got metal pipes - they're building nukes!" used as a motive to invade Iraq...