Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years

masterwit writes "The Jpost article states: 'The Stuxnet virus, which has attacked Iran's nuclear facilities and which Israel is suspected of creating, has set back the Islamic Republic's nuclear program by two years, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze the program's code told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Widespread speculation has named Israel's Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, as well as the United States.'"

Comments

And the winner is...

[jav1231]

Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years...LOIC set Mastercard back 2 hours. Advantage, Stuxnet!

Re:And the winner is...

[MrKaos]

(You know all the political mess we are in over waste products, and how California has banned new nuclear until the waste issue is resolved? Breeder reactors use nuclear 'waste' as fuel, burning over 99% of the fuel, instead of the 1% or so efficiency we get from traditional PWR/BWR reactors. IFRs can also burn depleted uranium, and weapons-grade plutonium.)

You are confusing two different types of *FAST* reactors technology, breeder and burner. Roughly, the process Breeder reactors perform combine similar quantities of two other elements with plutonium within the reactor and transmute them into plutonium. In other words Breeder reactors produce about three times as much plutonium that goes in creating a plutonium economy.

The IFR is a Burner reactor prototyped at Argonne National Laboratory's EBR-II. It achieved a burnup rate of 20% of the fuel before the remainder of the fuel has to be removed and reprocessed. The ambition was to have reprocessing facilities and all other facilities on-site, hence the name Integral Fast Reactor. Given this knowledge your claim that Californian policy on Nuclear reactors is a mess is, at best, not well informed.

Nah, Jimmy Carter set back the US nuclear program by 30 years by banning breeder reactors.

No he didn't. While people like to piss on Carter for this decision it is highly ignorant to do so. We have over 70,000 tons of waste plutonium *now* as a result of the once through cycle reactors we have now and still no plan to properly contain it. Had Carter not stepped in and ended the plutonium economy 30 years ago we would have an epidemic of plutonium production. Additionally Breeder reactors are much less forgiving than the once through reactor cycles that are currently in operation. Carter's decision to ban breeder reactors was a wise decision considering the lack of appropriate facilities to contain plutonium available today.

Well, Clinton can take some of the blame too, for killing the IFR

Indeed. Killing the research into IFR and it's complementary processes was probably a mistake. However material technology is still not available to make IFR a working proposition, especially as the reactor ages. IFR is only appropriate technology when the lifespan of the reactor matches the decay time of it's waste product. Yes, I am saying we should learn how to build a reactor that lasts 600-1000 years as the decommission of an IFR reactor every 40-60 years severely reduces it's viability and practicality. Still developing the surrounding Integral technologies would be a good step forward until the material technology is available for the reactor as the fuel reprocessing technology is as important as the reactor itself.

You mean back in the 1950s when the first breeder reactors were built? :p Sure, I'll grant you that...The modern Type IV reactors safe(r), and since they get rid of most of the waste that causes most of the political problems with nuclear power,

Again you are confusing Breeder and Burner reactor technology. Breeder reactors allow less time to control run away reactions. Since they are cooled with sodium as the age any air that leaks into the system makes them explosive and they contain far more radioactive materials than a reactor like Chernobyl. The only new breeder reactor under construction that I know of is in India, in a flood prone area and sodium and water aren't friends in a nuclear reactor.

I'd say that it was a pretty bad decision by Clinton to kill the IFR research project.

Yes it was, because it has great promise for burning up not only pu-239 but also U-238, or depleted uranium, DU.

if you're looking at risk levels from nuclear vs. other plants, the numbers just aren't there to support the anti-nuclear crowd. If nuclear killed even a hundr

Re:Hey, what about the Russians???

[antifoidulus]

Russia has actually repeatedly try to mediate the standoff by promising to do all the uranium enrichment necessary for nuclear power in Russia and then send the enriched uranium to Iran, all at a cost of course. The argument was that Iran could use the uranium to generate nuclear power ,which is their projects ostensible goal, without Iran getting any of the technology necessary to make a bomb. It never really made any progress.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were the president of the country in the middle of this map, it would be almost criminally irresponsible of me not to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. The US tends to attack countries that have oil, don't have nukes, and refuse to play ball.

Re:Two years...?

[surfdaddy]

A VERY interesting article with a lot of detail from (I know) Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/ A bit more detail that I'd read elsewhere. I strongly encourage everybody to read this. Quite an admirable job. But then you think that of course this could happen to control systems in the US as well. We all know countries and organizations that might be happy to attack. I'm sure this sort of thing will only grow in the years ahead.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[jc42]

OTOH, here in the US, I've often heard teenage girls vow to kill someone in revenge for a minor social slight. For some reason, people don't get all upset about "terrorist teenage girls" when they hear this, and they don't seem to worry at all about those girls getting access to weapons.

(And in Alaska, some of those girls grew up carrying and using weapons. ;-)

This puts it all in some sort of perspective, I suppose.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[flyingkillerrobots]

Yes. Hundreds of thousands. Try 7,500, 1,500 of whom were killed in intra-Palestinian fighting. If you are going to claim "well, the Israelis are tergeting primarily civilians," note that the Israeli civilian casualty rate is some higher than that of the Palestinians, despite that most of the intense fighting has been in Palestinian cities.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Iran didn't exist for the last 300 years, but if you count the Persians as "Iranians" for this example

"The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era [651 AD] and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was also known to the western world as Persia."

You seem to be purposely trying to mislead readers over the nature of Iran as a country.

[Iran] most definitely started the second Russo-Persian War.

"Fath 'Ali Shah, constantly in need of foreign subsidies, relied on the advice of British agents, who pressed him to reconquer the territories lost to Russia and pledged their support to military action."

So they were retaking land that Russia had taken from them 13 years earlier, at the end of the war Russia started with Iran (Persian). This is basically just continuing a war, definitely not something warlike. Also, they were put up to it by the British. Geez.

And as if 200 years of not starting wars wasn't enough to indicate that these aren't hotheaded people that go around making trouble for no reason.

I hope you're not in the US, otherwise you should get out of there, since if you are, you took the lands of native people forcibly as well.

Maybe you are thinking of Canada. I don't think anybody is under the impression that U.S. is a non-violent country that is all nice to their neighbors (or anybody else). If anything, you've shown why the world should be more concerned with the U.S. having nuclear weapons than Iran.

Put aside your agenda and look at the facts; Iran historically is a far more peaceful country than either Israel or the U.S.

Re:How wasteful we humans are.

[jovius]

There were Jews and Arabs living in the area long before it became the modern Israel. The problems today are the result of mass exodus and the (violent) expansion of Jewish settlements. The resistance and politics on either side has grown into a ultranationalistic psychotic fantasy. Nobody actually cared about the opinion of the people already living there when the borders were first drawn, so the first war was inevitable. Jewish nationalism was condemned by many a notable jew at the time.

It's sad how boths sides play politics exploiting their own people. Every death is used to promote selfish agenda, every military action is because of safety. Of course they don't own the people, but that's the convenient illusion to work with. We most probably end up to a single state and a similar struggle as in South Africa.

Re:Success

[geegel]

The latest evidence seems to point out that China might be behind the Stuxnet worm, as an expedient way of sabotaging a nuclear power without the diplomatic drama.

Of course, this is all highly circumstantial. We'll probably never know with absolute certainty.

Here's a rather insightful analysis on this hypothesis.