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Iran's Smart Concrete Can Cope With Earthquakes and Bombs
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs. UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibers. UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures. All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of meters of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs."
...brought to you by "the department of give-us-more-tax-dollars."
Hey, you war-mongering assholes, fuck off and stop trying to justify your next mass-murder. If you start this war, the blood is all on your hands, just like the last one was.
So, just because this "high performance" concrete was developed in Iran, it has dangerous military applications? Dangerous as in able to withstand US bombs? Should we start banning defensive technologies in order to make it easier for the US to invade?
If this was developed in any other nation, "military applications" would never have been mentioned.
Please don't fall for the fearmongering, Iran is not going to attack anyone, they know very well they would be instantly overrun. This is Iraq all over again.
As an aside, while I very much object to anyone including the US having nuclear weapons, I can't really see why Iran having them - if they indeed do - is a problem while Israel having them is not, a country that has constantly refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and employs an Apartheid-like policy towards Palestinians.
Iran is a very religious country, so is the US. Muslims want to kill Christians, Christians want to kill Muslims. Iran has corrupt leaders, that allow their people to suffer hunger, poor health care and bad education in order to spend millions in armament, this is also true about the US. It's also true that Iran is a fairly small country with few resources, while the US is a huge country and the most resourceful on the planet, and while Iran has failed in most military operations it has attempted, the US has succeeded. Iran is trying to get some nuclear weapons, the US is the only country to have ever used them on a civilian population. Currently Iran has no nuclear weapons, while the US has thousands. Iran is not currently at war, while the US has been consistently starting wars every year for 200 years.
And yet, when the US develops a new weapon, a new fighter, a new bomb, a new droid, or any other military advancement and clearly plans to use it soon at war, it's praised for its technological achievement. But when Iran develops a new construction technology, that has tens of applications, one of them, defense, then it's something we should be worried about and it makes Iran evil, and we should ask the glorious united states of america to destroy them real soon.
Fuck that bullshit, your western christian theocracy is no better than the eastern muslim theocracies, and just as crazy, delusional and violent.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Putting aside the obvious political flamebait, are we really now at a point where anything that's been at all updated since the 1950s is considered "smart"? The term makes sense for things that have a microcontroller added to them, but that's not the case here. This concrete isn't any smarter than my toothbrush.
You mean they wouldn't be able to put a nuke in a shipping container? Or perhaps hand a few over to Hezbolla and or Hamas? There is more than one way to "touch" America and missiles would probably be the last method used.
I guess you missed the whole 9/11 thing. You don't need ICBMs to attack another country.
Stop, please stop with the rhetoric. What happened on 9/11 were terrorists acts. It was not a declaration of war, it was not an invasion. It was not an attack in any meaningful way.
Otherwise any criminal enterprise is an attack that warrants some kind of military response.
And by the way, using airplanes to carry out a series of terrorist acts in the US is nothing out of the ordinary. They just used the most common means of transportation. Using the airplane in the US is like using a train in most smaller countries. The reason being obviously a difference in scale.
This is what is wrong with the US way of thinking. Everything has to be reduced to an "attack on something" so we can justify using our shiny new toys (aircraft carriers, tanks, F-22, drones, bunker busters, you name it) on the stupid poor guy standing on the other side of the street.
Seriously if Iran is any kind of menace (and it isn't) the world should be going apeshit on India, Pakistan, Cina, North Korea and Israel. You want to know the real menace ? The US and its tradition of starting wars for fucked up reasons (and half the western countries going along for the ride because of corrupt politicians say hello to Tony Blair!! ).
Hell, they could put a nuke in a train, and drive the train right into the middle of the white house; then detonate it.
Maybe they could get Bruce Lee to drive the train, jump out right before it hit, and rip the pres' heart right out of his chest and show it to him before he dies.
Once you take that little step into insane, there is no point in coming up short.
As some comments above have pointed out, the media as of late (well, probably always) has taken a really bias view of this Iran vs. US thing, to the point that.. I don't really know what to think.
In my quest to find less bias opinions, I turned to al-jazeera and other arab news sources to view comments from those who refer to Isreal as the "evil zionist regime." While many comments were ludicrous (but perhaps no more ludicrous than pro-US comments on CNN or something), there were many who pointed out that the US and Isreal have been known to carry out assassinations in Iran and other countries with basic impunity.
The question posed was, if Iran assassinated a scientist or politician in the United States, what kind of blow-back would there be? Why is the US/Isreal allowed to carry these out events without any world condemnation?
It's a difficult topic, because as much as I believe the US is going about things in the wrong way, if there's going to be someone who is the "world police" and the global power, I would prefer the US to any other country. Yet, it is clearly shielding the public from the double-standards it holds. Why does nobody else (general public) notice this? It's weird.
The problem is when a leader states "The Holocaust never occured" You have to pay attention to loons like that.
Yeah the U.S. is in bed with Israel and will be to the end of time. They know that having a nuclear ability is the start of black mailing other countires and don't let those Muslims fool you. Sunis and Shia hate each other like cats and Dogs.
Ever had a dog that gets all excited and wants to kill another dog and so you go to try and restrain him and he bites you instead? That's what will happen in Iraq. They care nothing about life and when the afterlife offers so much hope than life on Earth they have nothing to lose.
They live in the 16th century and thier thinking or rather thier religous theology brainwashes the population into a frenzy over a burned book. The ones in power know exactly how to rile up the poor people and whip them into a frenzy of mindless suicide bombers. They have posters plastered all over the place worshipping Martyrs. The point of the bomber isn't suicide - it is to kill infidels in battle. This is not just permitted by Muhammad, but encouraged with liberal promises of earthy rewards in heaven, including food and sex.
Martyrdom is what they are after and a nuclear weapon gives them the glorious death to kill millions of infidels.
Iran wont let the IAEA confirm that it's compliant, make of that what you will, but I suspect if a country was in compliance there'd be absolutely no reason to not let the IAEA confirm that to be the case.
Of course there would be a reason: to bluff having a weapon. Whether that would be a good reason, or indeed a good idea, is debatable but not the point.
"IAEA don't have the right to go anywhere they want anytime they want"
Of course they don't, but similarly if they aren't given access to what they need access to to determine compliance then they can't determine compliance.
The effects of that can be quite wide ranging, and that's the choice Iran has to deal with - whether any supposed fears of spying are outweighed by the benefits of being deemed not compliant.
It's unlikely spying is a real rational concern for Iran, their nuclear programme has been fed by the Russians and long before that, the Germans anyway, so none of their technology is really top secret home grown stuff - it's stuff the rest of the world already long figured out.
Yeah to an extent it is, there are differences though but even if there weren't it's false logic to assume that they were wrong last time, so they must be wrong this time.
In terms of the differences the inspectors on the ground for the most part were given a lot more access than is granted in Iran, and many, as well as people like Hans Blix were saying "There just aren't any WMDs here". It was somewhat hard for their voices to be heard because WMDs can be quite wide ranging in features, things like chlorine factories can be pretty dual purpose for example.
In the case of Iran inspectors have much less freedom, but they're fairly unanimous in the view that they don't have access to confirm that there isn't a nuclear weapons programme. Because the focus is much smaller than the broad nature of WMDs in general there's also far less ambiguity as to what they are looking for - features of a nuclear weapons programme stand out from the rest of a civilian programme and when elements of such a programme have been spotted by the IAEA or Iran can't or wont give a reason for their existence then the IAEAs claim that they can't determine that such elements are not for a weapons programme is quite valid, and obviously not in dispute.
Again, this doesn't mean Iran does have a nuclear weapons programme, but whilst there are parallels with Iraq it's still quite different. An underground fortified militiarised nuclear site that was kept secret until exposed by foreign nations and which has a number of pieces of evidence suggesting at least some kind of weapons research at some point has gone on is a lot more suspicious than an unguarded chlorine factory that has a comprehensive paper trail demonstrating legitimate customers with legitimate uses. Whether that suspicion alone is enough for varying types of action is a fair question, and precisely what the international community is at odds over. Much of the world felt Iraq didn't have WMDs based on the evidence but America and Britain went ahead as if it did anyway, in contrast the number of nations who believe Iran probably has a nuclear weapons programme is much larger and sanctions over the issue have been agreed by such classically Western opponents as Russia and China to boot - countries that wont even agree to a response over Syria despite it's blatant murder of civilians right now.
It's not a case of being right or wrong, it a case of being flat out lied to by people who want to go to war.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Iran wont let the IAEA confirm that it's compliant, make of that what you will, but I suspect if a country was in compliance there'd be absolutely no reason to not let the IAEA confirm that to be the case.
Not defending Iran... but...
If you're doing nothing wrong- you wouldn't mind the police routinely searching your home without a warrant. Or you Sig Other going through your cell phone call list/web history routinely.
Iran may or may not be doing anything wrong- but not letting inspectors have full access is not a sign of guilt. I wouldn't want the police randomly searching my house- I'm not breaking any laws (that I know of) but it's the kind of violation that you don't want occurring without necessity.
Again, I'm not defending Iran- they're clearly not "squeaky clean"- but the fact that they do have so many enemies may make them less wanting to endure being investigated and spied on. You say you're going to make sure we're not making nukes- they say, you're coming to spy on our infrastructure to build an attack plan on how to disable us.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Anyway, those are the facts. The U.S. didn't put NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain, inside 2,000 feet of granite, because they were worried about earthquakes. They did that because they were worried about getting hit by a nuclear bomb. Similarly the design of the Fordow site indicates that the Iranians are worried about airstrikes. In particular, the design of the Fordow site seems specifically aimed at hardening the target against a U.S. airstrike using advanced bunker-busters.
So the question is, why would Iran do this for a peaceful nuclear program? If Iran's real aim is nuclear power, it would be a lot easier to just do everything out in the open, and let the U.N. weapons inspectors have free reign and allay everybody's fears. On the other hand, if you want the capability to build a nuclear bomb, and don't want the Israelis or the U.S. to stop you, then you do precisely what the Iranians are currently doing: build multiple enrichment facilities (so they can't be taken out by a single airstrike), build them deep underground, and harden them with advanced concrete and blast doors. Watching Ahmadinejad you could be forgiven for thinking that the Iranian government is run by irrational idiots, but this is really a very clever, well-thought-out approach to developing a nuclear bomb.
And the thing is, developing a nuclear bomb is not an irrational move here. Saddam Hussein's mistake wasn't pursuing WMD, it was that he didn't go far enough. If he'd had the ability to inflict mass civilian casualties with WMD, nobody would have bothered him. North Korea has two deterrent weapons- a nuclear bomb, and heavy artillery and missiles that can hit Seoul, causing large scale civilian casualties. There's a reason that Bush never screwed with Kim Jong Il. This isn't lost on the mullahs who run Iran. They realize that without any allies, they are vulnerable to regime change. But with a nuclear bomb, they will have a deterrent weapon.