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To: maquiladora
Good post. Further, the Jerusalem Post has curiously omitted a few salient facts:

The deal was finalized on Friday. If the Russians don't do the enriching, the French were ready to step in.

With American approval.

We built the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) in 1967 and we supplied it with 19.75% low enriched uranium (LEU) until 1992 when Argentina took over. Their LEU is now worn out.

The TRR's LEU produces medical-use Molybdenum 99 which is a "preservative" for, and decays into, the very short-living Technetium-99m which produces powerful gamma x-rays for medical use.

Iran cannot produce enough Moly 99 and about half is lost during import. If Iran wants another 5 year supply of medical-diagnostic Moly 99 they will have to ship all of their LEU (1508 kg @ 4.4%/UF6) to Russia for a year and get it back as unweaponable fuel rods for TRR. Even that will be about 700 kg short.

Iran is out of yellow cake and this deal effectively guts their nuke program. Iran has not been able to enrich LEU past 4.4% for a number of technical reasons I could go into. They are stuck, we are blocking their access to more yellowcake and they are making the best use of their UF6.

Iran may truly be developing (somehow?) the bomb but we cannot let them or Israel to push their hysterics past us.

4 posted on 10/05/2009 9:03:09 AM PDT by gandalftb (An appeaser feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last......)
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To: gandalftb
Good post but I have a feeling that the deal won't go through. How will the Iranian hardliners be able to justify sending their entire stockpile of several years work out of the country when they refuse to even talk about even a temporary suspension of enrichment? Seems like a massive concession, and its not even something that would satisfy the Israelis, because it leaves Irans entire nuclear infrastructure intact and operational.
8 posted on 10/05/2009 9:32:57 AM PDT by maquiladora
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To: gandalftb
So, why can't Iran, with all of their supposed nuke brilliance, build the bomb?

Their uranium is highly contaminated with molybdenum hexafluoride (MoF6). So?

We stopped the Chinese from finishing the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), near Esfahan, that would have "filtered" out the MoF6.

MoF6 has nearly the same weight and size as uranium hexafluoride UF6 (weapons grade uranium). As their centrifuges spin at 80k+ rpm, the MoF6 gets into the cascade tubing and plugs it up. That imbalances the centrifuge and it tears itself apart before the lab techs can slow down the centrifuge.

Centrifuges are so touchy that the oil residue from a wiped-off fingerprint will tear them apart.

It does not matter that they have the 50,000 centifuges they are building, or that they know how to build a bomb. They have only gone from 3.5% purity to maybe 4.4% in a year, and they are stuck at that. They have to get to 90% for a bomb small enough for a rocket.

In fact, now Russia will need a year to filter out the MoF6 from Iran's LEU before they can enrich and make fuel rods for Iran.

9 posted on 10/05/2009 9:34:46 AM PDT by gandalftb (An appeaser feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last......)
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