Israel: Iran Nuke Plant 'Totally Unacceptable'
 

Israel criticizes the fueling of Iran's first nuclear power plant and calls for greater pressure to force Tehran to cease uranium enrichment.


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08...-unacceptable/

The power of the atom is not restricted to one nation or another. If Iran wants to use nuclear energy power plants, who are we to say otherwise?

Now, should spend uranium rods be weaponized, Iran's nuclear program should be wiped off the face of the Earth...

Absolutely true!
 

Power plants are one thing, and nuke a completely different, and in the wrong hands In addition.

The Sun rises and sets...

Haha, I saw a news item on Slate.com and without my glasses, this:

Iran Starts Fueling Nuclear Reactor

at first glance it looked a lot like the e in "Fueling" was a c, and the l was a k...
Iran Starts Fu**ing Nuclear Reactor

and I thought for a moment, hey, the media finally got it right :haha:

A nuclear power plant for power and one for making a bomb are too different things. The Bushehr plant is a low grade reactor, and besides the Russians are providing and removing the fuel.

The thing has been on the go for 30 odd year. I think Israel is just thumping its drum on this.

Now I'm not saying Iran doesn't want nukes and that it isn't trying to make them but Bushehr has nothing to do with this.

Well commented. :up:

But doesn't Iran have 2 nuclear enrichment facilities ? So they do have the possible capability to enrich Uranium to weapons grade.

So?

Last time I checked, the world still does not revolve around what Israel likes or dislikes. :nope:

actually i've heard about 10.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/4...facilities.jpg

There is also an enrichment facility near the Iranian city of Qum, at a place called Fordo.

Here is a more extensive map


Want to weaponize it? Just put it in a GP Bomb with a air burst fuse.

In other news Iran releases new photos of Buzz Bomb...
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/3...7624337752.jpg

Possibly this particular reactor is low-grade......
 

but there is always the possibility of using ancillary material to a great variety of weapons...

:haha::haha: :cool:

My point was that the Bushehr reactor isn't capable of enriching or producing enriched uranium or plutonium, so I don't get the big deal of it going nuclear.

I really don't see Israel or anyone else for that matter doing anything militarily until there is overpowering evidence to show that the enrichment process has started.

Even then a lot will depend on how major players such as Russia and China are feeling at the time.

Nobody is going to risk a possible escalation to a nuclear exchange over Iran.

Now if the major players can agree on a way forward, acceptable to them all.....all options would be on the table.

maybe no "big deal" but the fact,
 

is that there is always a potential security risk to gain control over their need of access to material,and it has nothing to do with the construction of power plants, although there are suspicions that the country an interest that there should be weapons-related, they have more plants not only this..

Technically the Bushehr reactor can produce Plutonium. Pretty much every fission reactor produces PU as a byproduct. The issue is what can the Iranian's do with the PU that will be produced at Bushehrr?

Not much. Even if they were allowed to keep the irradiated fuel rods (which is not part of the agreement) the Iranians do not have a Uranium reprocessing capability (e.g. PUREX) nor do they have a reprocessing facility (which are very hard to hide). Additionally, the Bushehr reactor will be monitored so that the burn-times of the rods will be known, which helps determine the isotope of PU being produced.

So this means

a. The Iranians will not be keeping the irradiated fuel rods with PU byproduct.

b. The Iranians will not be able to cook the rods to minimize the production of 240PU without everyone in the world knowing about it.

c. If they were able to keep them, they do not have the capability of extracting the PU.

And we have not even touched on whether Iran has the capability of constructing an implosion device. If you ask the North Koreans, they can tell you that it ain't easy.

There is a lot to worry about concerning Iran. This reactor is not one of them.

But they could build a bomb with just the U-235 like Fat Man (The Hiroshima Bomb) and Thin Man type devices.

This reactor doesn't matter either way.

you are absolutely correct. If they want to build a 235U device, they won't need a reactor at all, but their Uranium Enrichment facilities.

Only if they want to build a 239PU device will they need irradiated fuel rods, but then they also need a PUREX type facility.

A "thin man" device won't work. The Thin Man was a Plutonium gun type device. There are many obstacles to making a gun-type PU device (the speed of the gun needs to be about 10X faster than for a U gun-type device, for example), but in any case, for all practical purposes, if a nation is going to use PU for their devices, they will need to go with the much much more complicated and complex implosion design.

Russia can't really be trusted to do the right thing, esp with Putin in charge.