Replies

Iran has no active nuclear reactor online as of yet that it could use to eventually extract plutonium from spent fuel rods. And that process if all was totally operationoal would be a few years down the pike, assuming they did not return the fuel rods to the Russians as they are supposed to do. They are still in the very early phase of engineering and actually assembling a sufficiently large enough series cascade gas centrifuge system capable of producing sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium, where I am talking about a percentage in the high eightees or low nineties which would provide them with what we call weapon grade uranium.
Therefore, they either have gotten very small amounts of plutonium form say NK, China, Russia, or Pakistan for experimenting with, e.g. nuclear hot lab processes for instance, or they have accquire the stuff via. some other means.
But the article does not disclose as usual any usefull information. What percent of U235 of a given amount was dedected. What amount of plutonium was detected. Are we talking about microcuries amounts where some piece of equipment obtained elsewhere may have had a tiny bit of residual of either atttached to it.
I am not going to knee jerk. To much knee jerking was done by us last year.
That does not mean I am insensitive to their plans to eventually obtain the techniques to fabricate some low yield atom weapon. They could eventually obtain that level of sophistication.

They are still in the very early phase of engineering and actually assembling a sufficiently large enough series cascade gas centrifuge system capable of producing sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium, where I am talking about a percentage in the high eightees or low nineties which would provide them with what we call weapon grade uranium.

Therefore, they either have gotten very small amounts of plutonium form say NK, China, Russia, or Pakistan for experimenting with, e.g. nuclear hot lab processes for instance, or they have accquire the stuff via. some other means.

Your "argument" is filled with two MAJOR assumptions, and you know what happens when you ASS-U-ME right?

One, you take at face value what they say the capabilities are... that is what we know for fact and what they have admitted to (in terms of centrifuges and production lines), which IF they had a secret parallel program (with the 'public' one used for diplomacy and the real one for capability) would be BLOWN out of the water. So you basically assume they are not hiding anything more.

Two, you assume that IF they didn't produce it themselves, then they must 'have a small amount for experimental purposes', which has no basis in fact (as you said the article was lacking in specifics) but judging from the IAEA's past I'd think it couldn't be "minuscule" anything if they actually called them on it. I could just as easily assume they have a large amount, enough in fact to assemble and entire bomb on the same basis.

Do you feel lucky? Well... do ya?

"And that process if all was totally operationoal would be a few years down the pike, assuming they did not return the fuel rods to the Russians as they are supposed to do."

They didn't return the rods, the Russians said that Iran did not pay them the fees for these services. No, I am not kidding. I wish I kept that article in my achives. It is one for the history books.