Iran a few points to consider before invading

[Dudish dude]

Its only a matter of time before the USA and the UK find an excuse to invade Iran and its odds on to be about WMD's.

 

[Anomalous]

Its only a matter of time before the USA and the UK find an excuse to invade Iran and its odds on to be about WMD's.

This time though I hope they use WMDs in defense.

Saddam was a Coward He should have Nuked them, instead he hid all his WMDs, what a fool.

 

[Dudish dude]

um, i hope they dont use WMD's cuz then we'll all die.

 

[Anomalous]

um, i hope they dont use WMD's cuz then we'll all die.

Hey chill, we all die someday or the other, only in this case though U wont die alone, there will be 6 Billion others to accomodate with U. Better die together instead of alone, look at the bright side of it, there will be no more wars.

 

[Alejandro]

it's about people (one person in this case((who just happens to look like Charles Manson)) producing nukes and GIVING\SELLING them to criminals.

watch some Batman movies, then youll understand.

 

[spidergoat]

As distasteful as it is, I don't think there is any alternative but letting Iran go ahead with developing their atomic weapons program. (Face it, Brian, that's what they really want)

They know that if the US invades another soveriegn (largely) muslim nation, the gates of hell will be officially open.

 

[Quigly]

Iran's pissing off a lot of different countries right now. If war or bombing becomes the only option, then the US won't be going at it alone.

 

[AmishRakeFight]

Neither will Iran. They're already compiling a list of formidable allies who back them up if it came down to war, although the question of whether they will be supplying soldiers, supplies, or even it being a proxy war is still too far in the future to tell.

AmishRakeFight

 

[Alejandro]

lets see 70+ years of heavy dependance on oil, untold billions shelled out for this poison fluid and where has this money gone????

hmmmmm elevate the people? advance humanity? build infrastructure, feed starving children? education?

well i can see why people are pissed off, but pissed at who?

 

[Anomalous]

They have meticulously manipulated USA so that they can shooo off UN inspectors and start building theirs defense systems.

Hats off to them, Justice has happened with use of wits.

 

[Brian Foley]

then the US won't be going at it alone.

Yeah you think so !

U.S. may have to go it alone in Iran
Policy experts warn that the United States may not be able to rely on perennial ally the United Kingdom for support over Iran's nuclear program.
"We can't look to Britain for (help) on Iran because they've paid the price on Iraq," said Jeffrey McCausland, director of leadership in conflict initiative at Dickinson College.

Translation: The British people won't buy another used war from America .

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

I have tried explaining the industrial techincal aspects of attaining an Atomic Bomb yet they all still want to believe a Nuclear bomb can be made up in someones bathtub overnight .

Who said this?

Also, please explain how the VVER-1000 reactor is NOT a breeder for plutonium. Using technical details, physical principles and related calculations of course.

Edit: For those of you hammering out "invasion", stop it. US military action against Iran, if such a thing were to ever happen, would consist of nothing more than a few airstrikes and cruise missile attacks. That is all that would be necessary to utterly obliterate their hopes of a weapons program. This could be done quite easily over the course of several hours. All the teeth-gnashing about an invasion is pointless.

 

[Alejandro]

Who said this?

Also, please explain how the VVER-1000 reactor is NOT a breeder for plutonium. Using technical details, physical principles and related calculations of course.

Edit: For those of you hammering out "invasion", stop it. US military action against Iran, if such a thing were to ever happen, would consist of nothing more than a few airstrikes and cruise missile attacks. That is all that would be necessary to utterly obliterate their hopes of a weapons program. This could be done quite easily over the course of several hours. All the teeth-gnashing about an invasion is pointless.

go ahead and ruin brian's fantasy.

 

[Neildo]

Edit: For those of you hammering out "invasion", stop it. US military action against Iran, if such a thing were to ever happen, would consist of nothing more than a few airstrikes and cruise missile attacks. That is all that would be necessary to utterly obliterate their hopes of a weapons program. This could be done quite easily over the course of several hours. All the teeth-gnashing about an invasion is pointless.

And if/when Iran retaliates against those airstrikes of ours with our soldiers next door in Iraq..?

- N

 

[Brian Foley]

Who said this?

Also, please explain how the VVER-1000 reactor is NOT a breeder for plutonium. Using technical details, physical principles and related calculations of course.

You have posed a question to me I answered it , and now you are going off into some ridiculous tangent . I have not a clue as to what you are trying to accomlish here .

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

And if/when Iran retaliates against those airstrikes of ours with our soldiers next door in Iraq..?

- N

Then we help defend Iraq?

You have posed a question to me I answered it , and now you are going off into some ridiculous tangent . I have not a clue as to what you are trying to accomlish here .

I want you to explain why the reactor Iran is building is NOT diagnostic of intent to produce fuel for weapons.

 

[Brian Foley]

I want you to explain why the reactor Iran is building is NOT diagnostic of intent to produce fuel for weapons.

I am not a nuclear physicist and if you are trying to make a point could you for fuck’s sake get to it !

Or better yet if you are trying to infer Iran is capable of attaining a nuclear weapon , then please show me the industrial/technological applications that Iran’s industrial complex possesses that would enable Iran to actually construct a nuclear bomb . I would be most interested to hear from you about this as the Americans , Europeans and Russians are in agreement that Iran does not possess the necessary industrial applications to build one .

 

[Neildo]

Then we help defend Iraq?

So if Iran invades Iraq due to our airstrikes, you think we'll just sit back and play defense in Iraq instead of invading Iran at the same time?

If we're gonna go through all that trouble of having another Iran-Iraq war, we may as well gain more ground and invade the SOBs while we're at it.

Let's just hope another "Gulf War Syndrome" isn't created from it with our use of new weaponry (mini-nukes) while our soldiers march over the new Iranian golf course as what happened in the first Gulf War.

- N

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

I am not a nuclear physicist and if you are trying to make a point could you for fuck’s sake get to it !

Or better yet if you are trying to infer Iran is capable of attaining a nuclear weapon , then please show me the industrial/technological applications that Iran’s industrial complex possesses that would enable Iran to actually construct a nuclear bomb . I would be most interested to hear from you about this as the Americans , Europeans and Russians are in agreement that Iran does not possess the necessary industrial applications to build one .

Fine. I'll just re-post what I've posted here before, and see what nuanced insight and expert technical commentary you can offer.

Iran doesn't want this reactor for power generation. They want it to produce weapon fuel.

As proof of this I offer the simple fact that the reactor currently being built at the Bushehr facility is a Russian VVER-1000. This is a descendant of the RBMK model, which is the type of reactor that caused the Chernobyl fire.

These reactors are very different from western designs. You hear the words "light water reactor" a lot, often described as being "proliferation-safe", such as the one we were supposed to help North Korea build under the 1994 Agreed Framework for this reason. This is because the types of reactors in use in the United States and Western Europe all use distilled water as coolant. This water is impregnated with boron to help it moderate the neutron activity in the core during operation, but the base ingredient is regular distilled water like you can buy in the supermarket. LWR's are proliferation-safe because their spent fuel rods contain only trace amounts of Plutonium, which as I'm sure you know is the element best suited for crude fission weapons of the sort that nascent nuclear states strive for. Without getting into the science of it, just take it as fact that there is no way to produce useful amounts of Plutonium with a light water reactor. The other advantage of light water reactors is that they are fail-safe. Water is both the reflector and the moderator - which means that water must be present to allow neutrons to bang about the core and continue splitting atoms. With a loss of core coolant, the water begins to boil, and the reaction stops. Steam bubbles are known as "voids" and LWR's have what is called a "negative void coefficient", which means that a void will cause a negative trend in core power. It is physically impossible for a LWR to function without core coolant.

The VVER-1000 as I said is a descendant of the RBMK design, and is therefore very poorly suited to utility power production. These reactors use a moderator comprised of blocks of graphite, in which channels are drilled for the fuel rods and for cooling water to pass. Water is used for cooling, but not for moderating. If voids form in the core of a VVER, the reaction will rapidly accelerate uncontrollably as there is no longer any water to act as a speed brake for free neutrons, but the moderator is still there to slow them down enough so they can be captured by the fuel and split more atoms. The coolant will boil off, but the fixed graphite moderator will not. The core will rapidly spike to dangerous power levels - thus the VVER has a "positive void coefficient". These reactor designs are just stupid, and there really isn't a nicer way to put it without being dishonest. From the instant the RBMK design became known, western engineers counted each day as a blessing when there wasn't some kind of catastrophe related to one (until Chernobyl of course). Even worse, the Soviets knew how poor a design it was, yet they continued to use it (and there are in fact 13 RBMK's still in operation in Russia and FSU tributaries). The reason the Soviets preferred this design was simple: the RBMK is a fast-breeder design that breeds a significant amount of Plutonium in its fuel rods. When the fuel in the core is depleted, it can be removed and easily reprocessed into Plutonium for weapons as North Korea has recently demonstrated. Essentially, any utility plant using an RBMK (or VVER, like Iran is building) is a weapon fuels factory that produces electricity on the side. These designs are only tacitly stable, have a rather poor fuel efficiency, and are maintenance-intensive as opposed to light water reactors. There is no plausible reason to build one unless you intend to build yourself a complete fuel cycle to supply a weapons program. LWR's are stable, produce more power in a smaller size and with less fuel, and don't automatically put you on the shit list with groups like the IAEA and countries like the United States.

Everybody here knows I am a huge fan of nuclear energy, and I'm all in favor of spreading the love wherever it's welcome - including Iran - especially in the less-developed world where clean, abundant energy could really help people. But it has been intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that Iran has been pursuing a complete fuel cycle for a weapons program since the late 1970s. Not only do they insist upon the VVER reactor, but they are also reluctant to engage the EU in a fuel/waste trade deal that would ensure the spent fuel would go to France for reprocessing, rather than staying in Iran where they could fashion it into weapon cores. Your hands don't get much redder than that. Meanwhile, Bushehr is located right on the Persian Gulf, well within the reach of the long arm of the Tomahawk.

So if Iran invades Iraq due to our airstrikes, you think we'll just sit back and play defense in Iraq instead of invading Iran at the same time?

If we're gonna go through all that trouble of having another Iran-Iraq war, we may as well gain more ground and invade the SOBs while we're at it.

Let's just hope another "Gulf War Syndrome" isn't created from it with our use of new weaponry (mini-nukes) while our soldiers march over the new Iranian golf course as what happened in the first Gulf War.

- N

I think this scenario is wildly implausible to begin with, but do you mean a full-scale landed invasion with a subsequent occupation a la what happened in Iraq? If so then no, there would be no reason to, and even if there was, we don't have the manpower resources for such a venture.

Also, you're a bit off the mark with the so-called "Mini Nukes" and GWS, FYI.

 

[Brian Foley]

Fine. I'll just re-post what I've posted here before, and see what nuanced insight and expert technical commentary you can offer.

Likewise I will repost what I wrote earlier .

However for anyone who understands nuclear physics, the difference between fuel-grade and weapons-grade enrichment is not as trivial as the media makes it seem. An enrichment plant built to make fuel rods has to be heavily modified and expanded before it can make significant amounts of weapons-grade materials. Such expansions are easily seen and unmistakable in their intent.

Now as I asked earlier .

Or better yet if you are trying to infer Iran is capable of attaining a nuclear weapon , then please show me the industrial/technological applications that Iran’s industrial complex possesses that would enable Iran to actually construct a nuclear bomb .

Simple enough ?