Since you're probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue. It reported that Iran's supply of low-enriched uranium -- the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs -- appears to have certain "impurities" that "could cause centrifuges to fail" if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.
Now that's interesting. The seeming breakthrough in negotiations on Oct. 1 in Geneva -- where Iran agreed to send most of its estimated 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment -- may not have been exactly what it appeared. Iran may have had no alternative but to seek foreign help in enrichment because its own centrifuges wouldn't work.
Or they could buy their enriched uranium from the Norks ...
"The impurities, certain metallic fluoride compounds, would interfere with centrifuge enrichment" at Iran's facility at Natanz, reported the newsletter's Bonn correspondent, Mark Hibbs.
This news strikes me as a potential bombshell. If the Nucleonics Week report is accurate (and there's some uncertainty among experts about how serious the contamination problem is), the Iranian nuclear program is in much worse shape than most analysts had realized. The contaminated fuel it has produced so far would be all but useless for nuclear weapons. To make enough fuel for a bomb, Iran might have to start over -- this time avoiding the impurities.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/22/2009 00:04 ||
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Sounds like IRAN may have a simil problem as INDIA'S PAST NUCTESTS, i.e. nuke explosive yields not as great as calculated or occurred, ala BHARAT RAKSHAK.
#3
And maybe Iran just contaminated a sample to fool the rest of the world into believing this.
And couldn't France or whoever just recontaminate the Uranium when finished with it? Seems to me weapons grade is closer to 90%, but I'm probably wrong.
Operation Castle Bravo was a test of the first deliverable fusion weapon in the US arsenal. The predicted yield was 5 megatons, but, in fact, "BRAVO" yielded 14.8 megatons, making it the largest U.S. nuclear test ever exploded.
There were some fusion reactions taking place that were not predicted at the time.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/22/2009 22:29 Comments ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Lebanon's President Michel Sleiman on Tuesday accused Israel of spying on his country in violation of a United Nations resolution intended to promote peace in the region.
"There is a difference between spying carried out by people who have been detected and detained and detectors and spying equipment which have been found during last week," he told reporters in Spain where he is on a state visit.
"Both these spy networks and these means of spying are a clear violation of Israel of (U.N.) Resolution 1701, even more so than the violation of Lebanese air space that is routinely carried out by Israel."
Resolution 1701 calls for the removal of weapons in southern Lebanon from the hands of everyone except the Lebanese army and other state security forces.
A Lebanese military source told AFP in Beirut on Sunday that three "Israeli spying devices" which monitored communications in Lebanon had been destroyed near the border with Israel, two of them blown up by the Israeli army.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement, said it discovered a spying device installed by Israel on a cable between the villages of Mays and Jebel after the 2006 war between it and the Jewish state.
It said the Lebanese army and troops from the United Nations Interim Forces in Southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) later discovered the two other devices.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/22/2009 00:00 ||
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Next thing you know, he'll accuse them of plotting to impose excise taxes on imports from Lebanon.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
10/22/2009 8:12 Comments ||
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Israel could have some fun with this, by suggesting that they knew of some nasty scandals among the top Lebanese, involving things so nasty and disgusting that they would not only be forced from office, but imprisoned.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By David Ignatius
