FReepathon Day 58.
Posted on 11/27/2012 3:25:16 PM PST by Uncle Miltie
Iran is planning to build a nuclear bomb with at least triple the force of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II, diagrams obtained by the Associated Press indicates. According to AP, the diagrams were first discovered by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scientists after an inspection of an Iranian nuclear facility. The document was published by the AP Tuesday after, the news agency said, it was leaked by officials critical of the way the West has been handling the Iran issue.
The diagrams discovered by the IAEA show Iranian scientists calculating the desired "nuclear explosive yield" in a device they were apparently working on.
......
The diagrams showed a scientific calculation of the expected yield of a nuclear device, with a maximum force of 50 kilotons, experts who saw the AP diagrams said. There was no possibility that the diagrams referred to a process other than construction of a nuclear weapon, the experts said.
If Iran is indeed designing a nuclear weapon with a 50 kiloton yield, it will be significantly stronger than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II, which were only 15 kilotons powerful. Nuclear weapons held by the U.S., Russia, and other countries are significantly stronger than a bomb with a 50 kiloton yield.
Iran, meanwhile, said Tuesday that it had filed complaints with the United Nations over what it said were violations of its airspace by U.S. planes.
...........
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Tuesday: Any country that violates Iranian airspace, he said, could expect “strong measures” to be taken against their planes or drones.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
And here I though they only wanted to build a little bitty one. Who is surprised by this?
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
And here I though they only wanted to build a little bitty one. Who is surprised by this?
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
And here I though they only wanted to build a little bitty one. Who is surprised by this?
Iranians are not Arabians. They are Persian, and, historically, considerably more sophisticated, cultured, and educated.
I think Israel takes Iran seriously.
Not just cobalt, either, if you're a poor nation, there are other nasty substances to use that are more readily available, but perhaps less effective, at spreading nasssty fallout (we hates it)....
My personal belief is...why *wouldn't* a nation salt most of its bombs?* I'll betcha China salts every one of theirs. Conversely, I'd bet that the USA, UK, France, Israel don't salt theirs. Go figure.
*Why not salt the bomb? A cobalt sheath is the easiest component to make. Triggers are harder, the other compoents are harder.
Yeah, I know, rational people wouldn't want to live in a world with wind-blown, wandering radiation clouds. (Neville Shute, anyone?) But not all of our enemies are rational (by our standard).
There is the additional consideration in that, if you're gonna fight a nukewar, why not assume the descendants of your enemy won't try to finish off/take revenge upon your descendants? Going nuclear is bound to generate a whole can o' whoopa$$ animosity against the perpetrator. Why wouldn't you just try to kill 'em all off, all future potential...I mean, if you're going nuclear to begin with, it's not like your playing paddycake, now, is it?
In other words, we're New World Americans living in a nuclear age with Old World mentalities. And that's what scares me. Precisely because those societies think long-term and vindictively when it comes to war.
Especially given the worldview of the Iranian theocracy, why wouldn't they salt their bomb? They'd want to maximize carnage. We all agree on that.
MAD (mutually assured destruction) worked versus the USSR, but is ineffective against Tehran, which has repeatedly expressed a desire to initiate a Final Battle--one they openly acknowledge they cannot win alone--that will usher in the Mahdi from Damascus. Yes, they know they can't win. But that act of initiating the war against the Great Satan signifies the faith they have in Allah to finish the battle for them. All they need to do is...show how much they trust in their Moon god. He'll do the rest.
There's never been a better case for pre-emptive war than there is now against Iran. God help us all. God help the people of Israel.
Sauron
dont forget the destruction of Mecca, the Aswan high dam, as well as atomic detonations at strategic points into the country of Israel to stave of invading forces. I would also blast an area in the desert region on the Egyptian border as well. Tehran with 2H’s, Reactor sites at Bushehr, Arak, a strike on the purification sites at strategic locations associated near water at Gchine, Chalus, Neka, Tabriz, Lavizan, and Gorgan. Follow up with atomic detonations at every major port which supports military vessels. You have to go all in if you are attacked.
Would be a shame if that bomb somehow blew up outside Tehran, killing hundreds of thousands. (Then the world would know that iran isn’t to be trusted with nukes.)
You are so right. There's no other way, because you can't be sure how much they've got left to hit you with.
NOT fully committing will only get more of your own people dead. It'd be like hitting the schoolyard bully twice your size with one shot, briefly knocking him down, but not finishing the fight then and there (while you can).
...and that's what's so scary about a nuclear war. It tends to ratchet UPwards rather than DOWNwards. It's self-escalating feature is pure evil genius, all the more so because it's so necessary.
Somewhere, The Devil is smiling.
Sauron
50kt means they’ve mastered ‘boosting’. Nuclear boosting means injecting tritium right before the conventional explosives go off. This ‘boosts’ the yields up due to neutron reaction from fusion of the tritium inside.
There is no reason to ‘salt’ anything with cobalt. At 50kt, salting is useless. It won’t convert anything to an isotope in the needed amounts. You have to move up to thermonuclear 2 or 3 stage. In that case, you want to use U-238 for the ‘dirty’ version and never anything else. Why? It’ll fission as well as U-235 and increase the yield per kg of the bomb and will also spew all the fallout you would ever want from a ‘cobalt salted bomb’.
Well, they’re right on schedule. I suppose hydrogen bombs are next, with yields in the megatons instead of kilotons.
The US developed its first H-bomb about seven years after the A-bomb. Russia did it in five, in part by stealing it from us. More information is out there today than ever. Iran will probably be able to do it in five or six — with help. Then we’ll all wake up one morning, perhaps while Hussein Obama is still in his second term, and Israel will be no more (and maybe not NYC, Chicago, DC, Miami, LA and Seattle, to boot).
No laughing matter.
but I’m confused as to why a peaceful nuclear program would have creation of explosions as a design goal.
The Iranians did say their program was peaceful in nature, didn’t they?
I guess they were not entirely candid in their previous
assurances.
That's not quite true, in terms of damage caused. Larger yield explosions are to some degree, "less efficient" than smaller ones. A crude way to think of it is that the destructive effect of an air blast goes up by the square root of the explosive power. (I know someone will come up with a more accurate figure, so, again, I just give that as a crude calculation.)
If you have enough material to make two small bombs (and a way to deliver two, to two targets), that's usually much more effective than a single larger "2x" bomb.
I'd be curious as to what type of design was found. Almost everyone forgets that a "gun" type A-bomb is not that hard to make, and is almost fool-proof, except that they can go off a little TOO easily...
and finish it.
So, is a “boosted” bomb considered an A-Bomb, an H-Bomb, or a hybrid?
Peaceful, yep.
If I were Israel I’d start openly testing, NOW. Untested designs are not weapon proof beyond the very basics.
Bookmark
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.