Ah, those trustworthy mullahs

| February 22, 2023

 

Several sources are reporting that Iran, that paragon of upright honest dealing, has been detected with uranium enriched at 84%.

Iran has been enriching uranium to up to 60% purity since April 2021. Three months ago, it started enriching to 60% at a second site, Fordow, which is dug into a mountain. Weapons grade is around 90%.

You may remember, during the Obama administration Iran agreed to restrictions on its programs in exchange for many sanctions being listed. instead, it violated the agreement so repeatedly (think: arms shipments to the Afghans, Houthis, etc.) that Trump asked for, and got, renewed sanctions. At the time, if memory serves, the Iranians said they were enriching only to the 60% level.

“So far, we have not made any attempt to enrich above 60%. The presence of particles above 60% enrichment does not mean production with an enrichment above 60%,” the spokesperson for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said on Monday, according to the official IRNA News agency.

International Business Times

About that 90% level:

Uranium enrichment 101 is that the process is all about the separation of two isotopes of uranium, the slightly lighter U235 isotope from the heavier but more numerous U238 isotope. The ratio of such isotopes in natural uranium is 993 U238 atoms to just 7 U235 atoms. The enrichment process alters the ratio. The 90 percent level is when the ratio is just 1:7 — i.e., 992 atoms of U238 have been stripped out. Eighty-four percent is roughly this ratio, so a workable bomb may need just a pound or two more of U235 to function. And Twitter feeds, milking the Bloomberg story, are reminding us that the first US bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, used material of roughly the 84 percent level.

The Hill

Using the logic of Iran’s nukey guy above, purity can float a lot from 60% to 84% accidentally (yeah, right!). Seems to me that if some of that 84% happened to be 90% – 1/4 as much deviation – life would suddenly get ‘way more interesting. Or what if Putin or Xi decided to gift Iran a couple of pounds of that 90% stuff just to screw with us?  Me, I always liked MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) as a way to keep folks in line, but nowadays with so many nuclear players, what’s to stop the Iranians from putting a device in an Indian-flagged ship headed to the US? Aren’t we glad we guaranteed everyone’s security with that 2015 agreement?

Category: Iran

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JTB

Calling Israel…!!!

Odie

Sorry I can’t give more thumbs up. Israel won’t stand for it.

11B-Mailclerk

The threshold for an explosively runaway supercritical mass is around 20% U235, not 90%. “Weapon-able” versus “weapons grade”

If big and clunky is OK, say a truck bomb or freighter bomb, then anything over 20% is “good enough”.

Iran crossed the “bomb” threshold a long time ago. They are working on “compact and easy to deliver” bomb and ” multistage” bomb.

Oopsie. We were not supposed to notice that.

Little Boy used 85% U235. Because the B29 couldn’t carry a bigger device.

26Limabeans
Anonymous

Well, Vince Vance and the Valiants (1979)…

Anonymous

Gee, they’re not thinkin’ of building a bomb, are they? /sarc

KoB

It’s almost like the people that have been screaming “Death to America” for the last 40+ years are serious about it. Not a matter of “if”, it’s now a matter of when.

timactual

On page 5 of the preamble to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran it clearly states that their ultimate goal is the establishment of a world wide caliphate. The Koran says the same thing–with details.
Yeah, they are serious. To quote Elwood Blues, “We are on a mission from God”. Too bad our “leaders” find acknowledging that fact to be an “inconvenient truth”.

Old tanker

M A D isn’t going to work when you consider the folks we are trying to influence it with do not care if they become “martyrs”. Threatening a suicidal person with death doesn’t have much traction especially if their idea of the future depends on inshala.

It is time for the Israelis to take out the trash and this time include the mad mullahs.

26Limabeans

Your point is well demonstrated to anyone following the news in
the Daily Mail concerning all the recent suicides by various
people for all sorts of reasons and by some pretty gruesome
and sadistic methods. What the hell is wrong with people?
Especially families. Wealthy families at that. And Mullahs yeah..

Anonymous

Hard to threaten a suicidal maniac with death, you know.

TopGoz

Once Iran has enough fissile material and a suitable delivery platform, they’ve made it abundantly clear that their first target is Israel.
Don’t expect them to test a device – the gun-type bomb we dropped on Hiroshima was untested because the theory was sound. Our Trinity test was to prove that you can achieve criticality with a subcritical mass by implosion.
And keep in mind that Mutually Assured Destruction only works against a government and population that don’t want to die. It has little value when a (perceived) martyr’s death is a favorable outcome.

Anonymous

Ripley had a good idea about Iranian mischief:

SFC D

And now, a musical interlude for your listening enjoyment.

President Elect Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH Neande

So? We strike first. Not with a bomb. Too loud. Too noisy. Too obvious. Gets a negative reaction from the neighbors.
Radioactive dust, delivered above the targets and allowed to sprinkle everywhere. Repeat once.
Then sit back and watch the effects.
Deny and disavow, “oh my goodness, how did that ever happen?”

They obviously will have a leak somewhere in the future. 👽 

jeff LPH 3 63-66

How about finding out a way to harden urine and sell it to those mullashmoolas.

Mike B

Back when I was an USAF Brat in Okinawa (77-80), people had shirts that showed a Mushroom Cloud over a map of Iran. The shirts had the following text “Made in America, Tested in Japan, Perfected in Iran”

Iran better careful of their own stuff will end up being used against them for the Perfected part. You know the Oops your plant just blew up on its own and turned your country into a giant parking lot or mirror…..

Another shirt seen at the time about Iran was “Nuke ’em til the asses glow, then use them as runway lights”. Or the ever favorite Mikey Mouse giving the bird saying “Hey Iran, Fuck You!”

Skivvy Stacker

I miss the good old days when it was just us and the commies threatening to turn each other into nuclear vapor.