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Iran Opens Its First Nuclear Power Plant
pickens writes "VOA reports that Russian and Iranian engineers have begun loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant located in the southern city of Bushehr amid international fears that Iran will use the facility to make nuclear weapons, a charge both Tehran and the Kremlin vehemently deny. Officials say it will take about two to three months for the plant to start producing electricity once all of the fuel rods have been moved into the reactor. The production capacity of the plant will initially be 500 megawatts, but will eventually increase to 1,000 megawatts. Earlier this year, Washington criticized Russia for going ahead with the planned opening of the plant amid global disagreement and concern over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Moscow did, however, back a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran, which called for Iran to stop uranium enrichment."
M.A.D. for a safer world! Today!
Offhand, there was that whole thing with the hostages in the embassy back in the 80s. That's all I got.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Well they arrested some US soldiers that were bouncing around in their coastal waters and then, er, gave them back a few days later after questioning.
Okay, seriously? They've not done anything much, it's that they exist. First off, they're too big to easily threaten and they also have means of responding - for example, they could seal the Strait of Hormuz which would majorly fuck up the US's oil supplies. Secondly, unless Russia helps out, you can't impose serious sanctions on them. End result: A country that doesn't have to do what you tell it to. And that's a big problem when you want to dominate the area. For example, Iran is primarily Shiite. So is a large proportion of the population of Iraq which is next door. Therefore it is natural for the nation of Iraq to form close ties with Iran. For another example, Israel has a policy of being the baddest bastards in their region and being able to threaten everyone else as their security policy. Again, Iran is large, powerful and getting better equipped every day. If Russia ever agrees to sell them modern air-defence weapons, then Israel's ability to bomb the fuck out of the country is severely diminished. If they ever get a nuclear weapon, then Israel will have to treat them as a military equal.
Basically, Iran is a "big kid". And that's a problem for the other "big kid" in the playground which is the US-Israelli bloc. The latter want to dominate the area, but so long as there's someone who isn't easy to push around, then the littler kids have someone they can maybe hide behind or try to become friends with. The US and Israel want themselves to be the only game in town. Iran, unless it can be kept down, means that there's another.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
An embassy which was run basically as a CIA safe house plotting to sabotage the Iranian government. Citation: Legacy of Ashes
If Israel struck the plant and killed a bunch of Russian engineers, that would be bad. If the strike put a radioactive plum in the air that drifted over part of China or India, that would be worse.
Not to mention the fact that if the Russians really got cheesed off they could just sell Iran warheads.
Any country with enough money and enough time is going to be able to acquire nuclear weapons. We might have to face the fact that there may not always be a military solution.
Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons, they don't feel the need to squander their collective treasure maintaining 12 aircraft carrier groups and they seem to get along just fine. Let some other country pick up some of the tab for being the world's policeman. We need that money here.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Right now, we're just dealing with karma of past actions by our government.
If we kept our noses out of others business, the World would probably be a much different place and there would be less hatred towards us.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I always shake my head and ruefully smile when I see these fear-mongering stories about hyped-up fears of “An Iranian Nuke in our Future!” and similar drivel. The IAEA inspects the program at ever single step of the way and of something is veering off course, everyone in the UN and the US will know. So far that hasn't happened, and my guess is that it won't.
For the record there's no simple, direct way to readily convert fuel-grade uranium into weapons-grade uranium, short of building a breeder reactor, and that's not exactly something you can do in your backyard or garage. Fuel-grade uranium doesn't go into a nuke, and you don't put weapons-grade uranium into your reactor, unless you want a really big “boom”.
As it stands, the only nation in the Mideast that illegally built a nuclear weapons program outside of international purview was Israel, and they got some of the initial materials to do so by smuggling the uranium from a refinement facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the late 1960's (c.f.: The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh). Yet you never hear two peeps about the “destabilizing influence in the Mideast” of that nuclear bandit state in the press, do you?
Also, let's not forget that the entire [crooked] line of thought is brought to you by the same perpetual prevaricators who threw up a lot of hot air about “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq!” and “Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan!” and then were trying to beat the drums for a war with Syria under the pretense of “Saddam moved all the weapons to Syria (and Iran!)” It's the same old, tired media meme rehashed once again for a petty excuse to get us involved in another war we don't need and can't afford.
For my part, I'd like to see every media editor that purports that very same lie to be strung up, just so the air can be cleared a bit.
For example, Iran is primarily Shiite. So is a large proportion of the population of Iraq which is next door. Therefore it is natural for the nation of Iraq to form close ties with Iran.
Heh, Iran and Iraq was at war for 8 years in the 1980s including chemical warfare. Saddam was no friend of Iran either, for as long as he was in power. They're both muslims like most of the Middle East but I don't think they're all that close. Ahmadinejad seems like the last with any real military ambition, which is what makes him scary. Oh there's dictatorships other places but they seem mostly content with ruling their own little patch of land. And him alone I wouldn't worry much about either, what I do fear is if he manages to trigger some sort of christian-muslim war instead of just Iraq vs Israel or whatever.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Right now, we're just dealing with karma of past actions by our government.
If we kept our noses out of others business, the World would probably be a much different place and there would be less hatred towards us."
It's sad that so few Americans understand this.
While it could theoretically be done, this particular plant is not very useful for making bomb material.
In order for plutonium produced by reactors to be useful for weapons it needs to be extracted from a reactor fairly shortly after being produced, or otherwise it will be contaminated with heavier plutonium isotopes that generate a lot of heat and neutrons, making the weapon design dramatically more difficult (so difficult in fact that it is probably easier to start all over and make decent material ). For this reason plants used to make bomb material are usually smaller and built to be able to refuel quickly. Attempting to separate the plutonium isotopes after they have been mixed would likely be more difficult than "simply" enriching uranium, so that's not much of a worry either.
It is possible to build large reactors that can function both as power-plants and bomb producers, but this generally requires them to be designed so they can change their fuel bundles while operating ( The UK and former Soviet used to do this ). For a large pressurized water reactor, like this one, it is however not practical since it would require you to shut down and restart it to replace the fuel at frequent intervals, and for such a large reactor doing that takes ages, and it would be obvious to the outside world what is going on ( you don't just hide the fact that a few gigawatt of spill heat suddenly went away ).
Basically of all the types of power producing reactors in widespread use in the world today, a large pressurized water reactor is probably the least suitable for making plutonium. It is theoretically possible, but it is not even a fraction as big a concern as the uranium enrichment facilities Iran is also operating. Those facilities can be used to create highly enriched U-235, which is pretty much the material that is easiest to turn into a nuclear weapon. Using plutonium can have advantages for advanced weapon designs, but it is a lot easier to do with uranium.
What has Iran ever done to us
Read some history.
Well that answers what the US has done to Iran, but not so much the other way around. Okay...
Let's start with the storming of the US embassy and hostage taking, and go from there, shall we?
Your starting point is the seizing of the US embassy during a revolution when the US had just seized Iranian assets, was supporting the dictator of the country and when there are peristent rumours that the embassy in question was containing rather more than diplomatic staff. Now, as you say, let's go on from there and see what other crimes Iran has perpetuated on the US people. The floor is yours...
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Unfortunately when the Ottoman Empire collapsed the West redrew the map of the Middle East without much attention being paid to ethnic or religious divides. Iraq under the Ba'athist was dominated to an extent by the Sunni minority. The regions bordering Iran are majority Shi'ite. With the fall of Saddam's Ba'athist regime solidarity among Shi'ites complicates matters of security, especially when you consider that during the first Gulf War the allied forces incited a primarily Shi'ite rebellion inside the South of Iraq only to abandon it once Kuwait was liberated.
The West's past conduct hasn't exactly endeared us to the Shi'ites in the south of Iraq, and Iran is certainly a natural ally after all we screwed them over as well by installing the Shah and generally interfering where we weren't wanted. The whole situation is a messy series of botch-ups by everyone involved.
Saddam was a puppet for the US. He fought our proxy war against Iran. We supplied him with the weapons to do so. We turned a blind eye to all the atrocities that were committed.
Iraq has the taint of the US, an Iran has plenty of reasons to not like the US. Those in power might not want to share ties, but the people would probably get along just fine.
~X~
you'd be speaking proper English. blimey.
Wrong! Stalin's plan was originally to invade Europe after Hitler destroyed all opposition in Europe. Hitler was the bad guy, Stalin was meant to be the liberator and liberate the whole of Europe - the way Stalin liberated Poland and tried to liberate Finland in 1939. That was the plan. That plan failed because while the Soviets helped train and establish the Wehrmacht in the 30s and actively aided Hitler in the opening stages of WW2, Stalin had no idea that Hitler would turn on him so quickly. The Soviets were massing huge numbers of troops, steel bombers, heavy tanks - the Soviets had the largest number of heavy tanks in 1939 (KW1 and 2) and the largest number of bombers (TB-3). They also had the world's greatest parachute force at about 1 million trained personnel, jumping from towers became a Soviet pastime in the 30s. The SU had virtually no civilian factories, they were preparing for an all out war. The typical view of defensive war seen in Russia was a war fought on the enemy's land - as depicted by Alexander Nevsky. All these were offensive weapons and tactics. When Hitler attacked these forces were incapable of using defensive tactics, they were not even blowing up bridges because Stalin had been building bridges in the 30s to help move his forces forward. Anyhow the Soviet plan was to let the West bleed itself out on Hitler, then the Soviet Union would liberate the European proletariat after the Western European masters and trade unions were gone, and establish a socialist system in every European country. This would have happened after WW2 had it not been for the fact that the USA got in the way and prevented further Soviet imperialism. The SU was more than capable of going West and taking out the French, British and remnant German forces.
Ideally for the US, the US could have let Stalin have all of Europe. The USA would have easily been able to trade with a socialist Europe and profit from it. The Americans instead risked war with the USSR and put their lives on the line for Germany, France, Britain and the rest of Western Europe. In Poland we wished the Americans would fight for us, but it would not be the case, still the American stance and containment allowed us to free ourselves when Gorbachev saw that he could no longer maintain Eastern Europe and would have to recreate the Soviet Economy on its own.
I must also oppose the moral relativism in this thread. The SU treated its own population and the populations of conquered nations very badly.
Tens of millions of civilians died including successful farmers (Kulaks), intelligentsia, ethnic minorities and anyone else who could oppose the Soviet Regime. One need only look at the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 now recognised as an act of genocide (Holodomor), the massacres of POWs in places like Katyn and deliberate withholding of support by the Soviet Union for the Warsaw Uprinsing against the Nazis which lead to 150-200,000 civilian deaths as Nazi reprisals.
If it was containment of Soviet expansion, why the hell did it start right after Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian Oil?