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Top-Secret US Replica of Iran Nuclear Sites Key To Weapons Deal
Lasrick writes Paul Richter at the LA Times has a very cool article describing replicas of Iran's nuclear facilities that the U.S. operates in order to study what Iran's technical capabilities are. "Using centrifuges acquired when Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003, as well as American-built equipment, the government has spent millions of dollars over more than a decade to build replicas of the enrichment facilities that are the pride of Iran's nuclear program. Since negotiations with Iran began in earnest, U.S. nuclear technicians have spent long hours tinkering with the machines to test different restrictions and see how much they would limit Iran's ability to convert uranium into bomb fuel."
Iran has been doing this for years.
At least our copies work.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This is getting way beyond creepy.
Does it matter if they have a fuel for 1000 nuclear bombs more than it matters if they have 1? not really it plays out the same way regardless
Is the US is shutting down all it's nuclear weapons programmes, or is this just the normal hypocrisy at work? Are you going to police China too? Russia? India? Pakistan? Just the intelligence costs alone from constant 'keyhole' overwatch, developing malware, etc must be astronomical.
Given that the USA managed it with 40ies technology, I would say that Iran should have no problem with 2003 technology. Maybe they can't build a bomb that powerful, but even the weakest nuke is powerful enough IMHO (as long as it's not a "dirty bomb").
The US government probably spent WAY more money building those replicas than Iran spent building the real thing.
Regardless of who's answer you believe, they would never drop it on Israel, and the reason why is simple. It is against Islamic law for a Muslim to cause harm to kill another Muslim.
Israel is surrounded by water and muslim countries. If anyone dropped a nuke on them, the follout is guaranteed to be blown over at least one muslim country regardless of wind direction (there's the simple answer), if not five or more. This would cause harm to or kill thousands of muslims, and any muslim country who did that would face an uprising that would make the Arab Spring look like a game of hackeysack.
As I recall we only have about 35kg of the stuff lying around in NASA storage, and have need of much more for space exploration.
I love reading about TOP SECRET things on public websites.
Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't we keep the nuclear proliferating with them low enough that power generation isn't really feasible, but just allow enough that it's possible to enrich materials to make an atomic bomb?
What could possibly go wrong?
Protip: This is literally what we are doing.
Things have slowed down as replicating Iran's nuclear facilities also replicated Stuxnet....
Isn't this sort of thing the reason government wanted all those supercomputers? To model this exact kind of thing? Or are all the supercomputers too busy sifting through everyone's phone calls and internet posts?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Regardless of who's answer you believe, they would never drop it on Israel, and the reason why is simple. It is against Islamic law for a Muslim to cause harm to kill another Muslim.
Israel is surrounded by water and muslim countries. If anyone dropped a nuke on them, the follout is guaranteed to be blown over at least one muslim country regardless of wind direction (there's the simple answer), if not five or more. This would cause harm to or kill thousands of muslims, and any muslim country who did that would face an uprising that would make the Arab Spring look like a game of hackeysack.
The amount of radiation depends on the size of the blast and the type of warhead used. The bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced residual radiation, but it didn't last very long. Many of the radionuclides had brief half-lives that in some cases were measured in minutes. The bomb sites were highly radioactive for a few hours after the detonations, but the residual radiation decreased rapidly. Also, and contrary to popular belief, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations did not cause genetic mutatinos. American military specialist who surveyed Hiroshima with Geiger counters weeks after the explosions found little residual radioactivity. So while there would probably be some radiation fallout in surrounding muslim countries and definitely a lot of people who die or become sick due to radiation in the target zones it would not be anything like what you imagine which seems to be wide stretches of land irradiated for tens of thousands of years and littered with the bodies of collateral muslim casualties so radioactive that they glow in the dark and don't decay because no micro organisms could survive in the intense radiation. Whenever somebody says nuclear strike people automatically default to thinking about cold war monster ICBMs carrying warheads in the 1 to 10 megaton range but you don't need to go that way. In fact Iran probably won't be able to because any warheads Iran is likely to create would be nowhere near the one megaton range. Realistic estimates I have seen for Iranian nuclear weapons top out at about 50 kilotons (as a reference the Hiroshima and Nagasaki weapons were in the 15-20 kiloton range). The fallout from a properly planned nuclear attack on Israel involving say half a dozen warheads in the sub 50 kiloton range would cause less fallout than that from US atmospheric nuclear tests in the 60s (the Yanks were setting off firecrackers way bigger than 50 kilotons). None of the fallout from those tests caused a civil insurrection in the USA that made the US civli war pale by comparison and this even after people became aware of what radiation can do to the human body. Personally I don't know which scares me more, Iranian Ayatollahs with nuclear weapons or right wing maniacs like Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu and Avigdor 'Avi' Lieberman with their fingers on the nuclear trigger. At least the Americans and the Soviets during the cold war were open to reason and logic but these Middle Eastern fanatics, jewish or muslim, are completely blinded by hate, religious fanaticism and race-political ideology.
Sounds like the same setup as was used for developing / testing stuxnet.
Sounds like the same setup as was used for developing / testing stuxnet.
Instead of telling Iran not to persue a nuclear program of any kind, they should first look at themselves. It's telling Iran not to create nuclear weapons otherwise there will be hell to pay, but they keep on making nuclear weapons themselves, so who is the agressor here.... And in history the only country ever using nuclear weapons is the US... So who are they to tell others not to pursue nuclear weapons (or energy)..
Not that I would like to have a country like Iran to have nuclear weapons, but if Isreal has them (and they have, and are not even allowed to have them) why not Iran too.. IMHO nobody should have nuclear weapons, and a country like the US should destroy all their nuclearweapons before telling others not to create them...
Ever since US, UK, France and China refused to enforce and uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum of Understanding, in which Ukraine gave up her nuclear arsenal in exchange for their guarantees of territorial integrity, only a fool would give up any nuclear weapons programme! We have seen how Putin and his "little green men" military curbed away the Crimea and the eastern regions of Ukraine starting last year, while all signatories of the BMoU sat idle, appeasing the madman. There was no Crimean War 2, there was no Treaty of Belgium ultimatum reboot, absolutely nothing was done. Had Ukraine wisely held onto her 2500-strong nuclear arsenal or even a small fraction of it, Putin couldn't have enroached on Ukraine's lands lest Moscow and St. Petersburg burn. But the ukranians gave up all nukes and only got false oaths in exchange plus an impending repeat of the Holodomor. (*)
Therefore, Iranians must be adamant and rather take the example of North Korea in stride. Phenyang has the nukes, the junkest nukes anybody ever built and still nobody dares to touch them, because even the junkest A-bomb is an A-bomb, a quality in and itself. Pakistan has the nukes and the USA or India doesn't dare to invade them, even though both would love to do so for various reasons. In contrast, Gaddhafi gave up the nuclear programme and three years later he was lynched and his properous (!) country lays bare in ruins and chaos. (Indeed, his Libya was suprisingly well-off, every man who married got a new-built flat for free to start family life, medical attention and 10 years of public education was free, all financed by the oil wealth!)
Saddam gave up on his WMD programme of gas and nukes and he ended up hanging and his Iraq fell into total anarchy and disintegration due to US scheming. Assad gave up on the poison gas he stockpiled to scare away the nuke-wielding zionist military state neighbour, yet his Syria still remains ever embattled by jihadist militias run by the CIA, Saudi, Tel-Aviv triangle. It is likely Assad will fall in the end and syrian territory will be ethnically purged of all arabs and eastern christians, to be eventually annexed to create what is depicted on the 10 agorot coin.
Therefore, Iran needs to push on and make a dozen or even just 7-8 atomic bombs of the 20-50 kT class. Then their country will be independent and inviolable forever. Otherwise the ancient lands of Zarathustra will be soon purged of all persians, muslims and fire-worshippers alike, only to be replaced by the merchantkind of Venice.
(*) Except the ruffians and the fool Free World politicians forgot the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was signed in the natural presence of the ancient and most Holy Crown of Hungary. That's one powerful item: because of the virtue of the Holy Crown, Popes officially recognized Hungary as an "apostolic kingdom", the only one in the world. The Godhead does not look kindly upon oath-breaking, thus He will fell each and every of those traitors for the greater glory of the Holy Crown of Hungary and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who wears that crown as Queen of Hungary.
Israel is a country that was invented post-world war that would not exist today if that region had been allowed to naturally work itself out.
Israel is the odd man out and it is the fault of the USA and the UK that it is there and killing people on a regular basis.
Note that my comment is in no way directed at the people of Israel.
Woah! Is this the US trying to secretly develop a nuclear bomb!?!
How to successfully conclude the nuclear negotiations with Iran:
The US should offer to completely destroy its replica of Iran's nuclear facilities in return for Iran undertaking to do the same.