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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."
capable of withstanding repeated ballistic impacts: Many engineers are seen with iPads doing structural-ballistic simulations involving various geometries made of wood, ice and stone, and green "test animals", whose survival indicates the durability of said structures.
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.
As a red-blooded American who served in the military and comes from a family who also did(mother served in army, father served in Marines and saw action in Vietnam, Grandfather who was bomber aircrew during WWII, uncle served in USAF), I endorse your comment wholeheartedly.
I know the Slashdot leadership and a good majority of their chickenhawk wannabe-military fanboy readership subscribe to Judeo-Christian beliefs about being in the moral right as nation-builders, but if you're gonna tacitly encourage war with Iran, then enlist, pick up a fuckin' gun, and go shoot yerselves some strangers. See your buddies turned into hamburger and shuttled back into the states to live their lives as disfigured vegetable abominations, and you can become a nonfunctional drug-addicted alcoholic having to cope with those horrors for life. There are laws to reward employers for hiring veterans, but all it takes is one flashback flipout to make even the most patriotic employer reexamine their hiring decisions. Kids can't even afford school because that money went to some glorified security guard being paid $300,000 a year.
If you're gonna go big, then at least do it right - indiscriminately carpet-bomb the entire Middle East, including Israel.
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.
Okay, you put me on the defensive. I joined the Air Force, which meant that I would get a bitchin' tech job(and I did) and likely never face danger. Yeah, call me a pussy, I don't give a fuck. It was during a time of (relative) peace and sanity, so I knew I wouldn't have to deal with wartime bullshit. I joined because I was unmotivated in high school, because I had a life, and so I needed job training and a college fund. My family were disciplined, but they sure as hell weren't rich - and I did need some discipline at the time. Why the hell not? Am I a pussy for admitting that?
I got out right after 9/11, but before the wars kicked in. I knew that the rationale for the wars was bullshit(WMD? we sold Saddam that WMD!), but by that time I was happy enough being the fuck out of the military. And yes, the world would be a better place if all of the religious people, or at least the people who subscribe to one or more of the three monotheistic religions of the Middle-East, would drop dead on the spot. That is where the trouble lies.
So the short answer is, no, I'm not a hypocrite.
And yes, the world would be a better place if all of the religious people, or at least the people who subscribe to one or more of the three monotheistic religions of the Middle-East, would drop dead on the spot. That is where the trouble lies.
I would be more content if the people who wanted to force others to believe what they believe at the end of a rifle or sword were singled out. Peaceful Christians, Jews and Muslims are not the problem.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
....And what does Saudi Arabia have to do with Iran? They're close allies with the US and enemies with Iran, which happens to have a fair number of native Christians (mostly Armenians and Georgians) as well as Jews and Zoroastrians who actually are allowed to own Bibles and Torahs are allowed exemptions from certain Islamic laws such as the ones on alcohol consumption. Said Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians also have their own guaranteed members of parliament, as set by the Iranian constitution.
I certainly won't sugarcoat the condition of minorities in Iran as paradise, and as an atheist I wouldn't want to live in either country, but Iran is certainly leaps and bounds better than the Saudis in terms of minorities. The Saudis don't even tolerate other sects of Islam, and in fact they destroyed the tomb of Mohammed, as well as other prominent Muslim figures, in the fear that they might turn into objects of worship by Islamic sects that have traditionally venerated at those sites. Bringing up Saudi Arabia as a reason to stop Iran really is a red herring.
just like Isreali installations were shown to be clean of weapons making.
must be a regional thing to be so peacuful.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I don't know why people keep parroting this, it's simply not true. It had some validity to it a few years back, but even then the IAEA has always had some concerns.
In recent years though the IAEA's stance if that they've found some evidence that Iran did continue a nuclear weapons programme, and has made it quite clear that Iran is not giving it the access and information it needs to confirm that it is in compliance. Whilst this doesn't mean Iran is not in compliance, it is certainly not the case that it is in compliance - 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. The fact they wont let the IAEA confirm whether they are or are not compliant is a cause for concern in itself and is in itself a breach of the NPT.
A bit of America/Israel bashing is all well and good, god only knows they've done enough to deserve it, but this attitude of defending Iran as an extreme anti-Israeli/US stance is even more absurd. A lot of people here go on about how Iran is an innocent peaceful nation that's never attacked anyone and so forth, but that's also complete rubbish, sure they may not directly declare war but they absolutely do carry out war by proxy (where the proxy is usually groups like Hamas, Hezbollah) and they do carry out clandestine ops. When you point this out people jump in and say "but the US does that too!", sure they do, but that doesn't somehow make it right. Keep in mind that even the staunchly anti-US Russia has in recent years refused to make itself some money selling Iran new military hardware - this is because Russia is concerned that Iran has links to groups in Chechnya and so forth too. The fact is, even if Iran doesn't declare war directly, everyone knows what it gets up to.
So hate Israel/America all you want, god only knows I've had enough of their actions, but to then jump to the extreme of defending Iran is just fucking idiotic. Iran is as much of a problem as Israel is that's for sure, and I'd argue with Iran's destabilisation of Lebanon so they can have their own proxy army on Israel's doorstep, they're worse. The only flip side to it all is that Iran is largely incompetent at this sort of thing, so when their bombers succeed in little more than blowing their own legs off in Asia, it's almost comical, Mossad in contrast gets the job done which, depending on your viewpoint on things either makes them better, worse, or just as bad.
Really, the fundamental reality of the situation is that Iran, Israel, the US and so forth are all as bad as each other. My personal view is that if Israel/US attack Iran then I have little sympathy for Iran, it's a game they chose to play, and when you choose to play a game, you can't really cry when you lose. They still have every opportunity to bow out gracefully.
Israel has always been considered a "friendly" nation; Iran, not so much. No-one's looking the other way when they inspect Iran's facilities!
Iran: we want to generate nuclear power
World: use oil instead.
Iran: no no no, you don't understand: you pay us lots of money for oil, so we want to keep selling it to you, and using cheap nuclear domestically.
World: but you're making weapons!
Iran: no we're not.
IAEA: they're telling the truth.
US, UK, Isreal: are you telling me you atomic energy experts know more about atomic energy than our paranoid military intelligence people? They're obviously making bombs.
World:...
Iran: have you seen our nice concrete? It stops our nuclear facilities from collapsing in the event of a geological disaster.
US: earthquake-proof nuclear facilities, in an earthquake zone? Hah! A likely story! They're bomb-proof weapons plants. Even Japan doesn't make its nuclear facilities proof against geological events....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'