Posted on 06/23/2004 11:42:15 PM PDT by neverdem
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has just rebuked Iran for failing to cooperate fully with international inspectors who are examining whether Tehran is meeting its nonproliferation commitments.
How concerned should we be about this development? What does it mean? By its own admission, Iran has been taking steps to develop the capability to enrich uranium, one of the two methods used to produce weapons-grade fissile material. While Iran says its activities are solely for peaceful production of nuclear power and are permitted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, once enrichment capability exists, a major barrier to producing a nuclear weapon virtually vanishes. The IAEA condemnation is an indication that the world may be on the verge of a major breakdown of the nonproliferation regime, to say nothing of a huge new source of instability in a critically important region.
The absence of an effective international response to North Korean efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability may already have resulted in the entry of another country into the ranks of nuclear-capable powers. North Korea not only can be presumed to have reprocessed enough plutonium this year for an additional six to eight nuclear weapons, it reportedly also is working on a uranium enrichment capability to accompany its existing ability to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel rods.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Israel...or the US should bomb them NOW. EVERY facility...turn the sand into glass.
What are we waiting for...
Iraq has been stopped. The first example has been set.
North Korea has not, but finds itself isolated and hopeless. Perhaps they can be contained. Perhaps the fall of their regime will bring down nuclear fire with it. That may set another example entirely.
Iran will be the key to the nuclear proliferation problem. They are not isolated. They have ideological allies, and powerful nations still deal with them openly. If we cannot demonstrate our resolve and power with Iran, nuclear weapons will spread to all of their allies sooner or later. Then, it will be only a matter of time before those weapons find their way to our shores.
These countries must be stopped, and their weapons must be taken. Our contemporaries may decry us if we succeed, but history will be merciless with us if we fail.
Right on!
We must defang the evil regimes.
Ooops... Syria.
Cuba and Venezuela are problems, but not immediate threats. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also have to be watched carefully.
Clinton could have fixed ? India and Pakistan aquired nukes on his watch. Clinton should be in jail for treason, no questions asked.
The Establishment is setting the table.
Hostilities on the distant horizon.
Memos Show Confusion, Dissent as Bush Administration Made Interrogation Policy An AP News Analysis
India did a "peaceful" nuke detonation in the early 1970s, IIRC. Supposedly, it was intended for giant earth moving projects, but everyone assumed it was to show China and Pakistan not to get to randy.
My mistake, he helped arm a Muslim extremist dictatorship by looking the other way.
Already saw it. Speechless. Words fail me.
Although my personal fave would be to go and smack Syria up the side of the head, if we don't destroy those Iranian facilities soon, they'll use those weapons against us because they're insane. Then, of course, the surging citizens will feel a boost of energy and maybe rise up and oust the freaks in charge. Or we can shoot the freaks. Either way.
Nuke physics primer:
There are 2 primary types of fission nukes, implosion and gun tube.
There are 2 nuclear fuels, plutonium and uranium.
Plutonium is relatively easy to make/get and enriched Uranium is hard to make.
Implosion devices are very hard to make, gun tube devices are very easy to make.
Plutonium doesn't work in a gun tube device.
Thus it is easy to get plutonium, but hard to make a bomb out of. It is hard to get enriched uranium, but easy to make a bomb out of once you have it.
That is why the fears of Iranian uranium enrichment are so potent.
The Saudis have a WMD program and should be smacked down. So does Egypt, even if no one is talking about it. Egypt is preparing for war. Brazil has declared its intent to produce nuclear weapons and its hostility towards the west.
Plenty of countries that have already taken sides in the inevitable showdown.
Gun tube?
I have never heard of it.Can you tell us how it works without revealing any secrets?
Iran absolutely must be stopped, because they are the last linkage to an accountable nation-state with respect to a fission-device. Heck, let's cut to the chase: we're talking about an ATOMIC BOMB here folks. Let there be no doubt:
1. Iran will not enforce rigid standards of accountability to ensure the material is retained in the custody of the accountable nation-state.
2. Without such accountability, Islamic terrorists will eventually (sooner not later) gain possession of this material, and ultimately, ATOMIC BOMBS without our knowledge of their whereabouts.
3. The terrorists, being what they are, are invulnerable to pre-emptive action.
4. The terrorists, being what they are, cannot be held accountable, prior to the knowledge of their existence.
5. Holding the last known nation-state (Iran) accountable at that point isn't going to regain the possession of the contraband weapons.
6. Unless there is a strain of human decency that I am not aware of, the terrorists, undeterred and unaccountable, have no moral restraint - only the restraint of possibly getting caught in the act - to prevent them from detonating WMDs on American soil.
7. They have every motivation to wish to harm us to the greatest extent possible.
8. We will, therefore, be "nuked". We can subsequently destroy, Mecca, Medina, and kill 100s of millions of people in revenge should we choose to - but it doesn't stop us from getting "nuked".
That is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We have lost our strategic nuclear deterrent - and we have nothing else to deter such action. Indeed, the entire civilized world is left with only pre-emption or Kumbaya as options for global survival strategies.
And the Democrats really...don't... care... as long as Bush is defeated.
I think a call to Ariel Sharon offering diplomatic cover for Israel to do a midnight run over the facility. We'll buy the gas and a couple of MOABS. We can sneak them right over Iraq..
Israel is most immediately threatened by this (and in turn US and UK.) This reinforces past Israeli policy and gives Blair and W political cover.
We can't. If we do that, Michael Moore might make fun of us.
And then the French would laugh.
And liberals would get upset at us.
Being as Democrats deeply hate America, the destruction of the US would be just fine by them.
Very basically, it is a cannon which fires a sub-critical mass at a sub-critical target. When the two meet, fireworks ensue. The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was such a device.
At the end of WWII, we dropped two different types of bomb, but we only tested one beforehand, the implosion bomb. We knew the gun barrel device would work, so it was never tested.
"Being as Democrats deeply hate America, the destruction of the US would be just fine by them."
That's not really what I'm trying to say. The vast majority of the millions of Americans who vote Democraticy truly do love America - at least their vision of what it should be - but they are obsessed with politics as a team sport. To them, NOTHING else matters except getting rid of Bush and getting their team back in power. They don't care who their guy is, what he stands for, or how he's going to keep us from getting nuked.
It doesn't matter to them now, because they can't see any further than George W. Bush as the ultimate enemy.
But I'd like to think they would care a little more about it if they knew their families were about to be annihilated by the end of the decade. And by the time they figure it all out, blaming Bush after the fact for the inevitable holocaust will be hollow victory, indeed.
Re: Gun tube?
I have never heard of it.Can you tell us how it works without revealing any secrets?
The Manhattan project yielded two different designs for atomic bombs. One used a plutonium core surrounded by a dissembled shell of U-238 (like a soccer ball). The U-238 shell was imploded onto the plutonium core causing the reaction. This was a complicated design which maximized the effectiveness of the small quantities of plutonium then available by combining it with the much more common plain U-238. Tested at Trinity and then dropped on Nagasaki.
The other design used a large quantity of enriched uranium which was very difficult to get but yielded a very simple bomb design. Cast a large (but sub-critical) chunk of U-235 with the center section missing. Shoot the missing chunk into the now critical mass with a gun tube and say boom. This was LittleBoy. Since the amount of U-235 was limited it was not tested until it was dropped over Hiroshima.
This stuff is well known--the difficult part is making the most bang for the buck.
Sure. Implosion devices rely on increasing the density of a single piece or close together pieces of fissile material to cause the nuclear chain reaction.
A gun tube device relies on taking 2 (or more) seperate sub-critical mass pieces and slamming them together with explosive force to create a critical mass. Fat Man (Nagasaki) was an implosion device and Little Boy (Hiroshima) was a gun tube device.
Thanks for the primer.
Thanks alot.A guy can learn something every day here.
You are welcome. I have learned quite a bit myself from others just by lurking here persistantly for the last several years.
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