Ok, That's Enough (Iran And Uranium)
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2012-05-25 12:29
by Karl Denninger
in International
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Ok, That's Enough (Iran And Uranium)
 

I'm done with this and the rest of us ought to be too.  And just for context, I am generally opposed to any sort of wartime act -- unless it is to prevent an inevitable wartime act.

From the WSJ:

VIENNA—The United Nations atomic agency has found evidence at an underground bunker in Iran that could mean the country has moved closer to producing the uranium threshold needed to arm nuclear missiles, diplomats said Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has found traces of uranium enriched up to 27% at the Fordo enrichment plant in central Iran, several diplomats told The Associated Press.

That's enough for me.

There is no reason to enrich uranium beyond ~5% if you are using it only for power production.  Power reactors are intentionally designed to not use highly-enriched fuel as a safety mechanism, as the minimum enrichment necessary to form a prompt critical mass (think "boom") is approximately 20%.

"Boom" is bad when it happens accidentally, by the way.

More to the point there is no reason in today's world for any nation that does not have dual-use intentions to run a uranium fuel cycle in the first place.  Starting with nothing (no infrastructure) there are far better and safer options, including the Thorium fuel cycle, which are extremely difficult (but not impossible) to pervert for weapons use.

The Journal goes on to say that you need 90% enrichment for weapons; this is not technically true, as it is possible to form a prompt critical mass beyond the 20% threshold or thereabouts.  It is, however, difficult and someone intending to build actual bombs would typically want that 90% enrichment.

But if you're enriching to 27%, you can easily enrich to 90%.  It's the same process; it just takes longer.  And there is no reason for peaceful, land-based power production, to use fuel enriched to that level.  It's dangerous, it has the potential to result in a positive-coefficient configuration (that is, reactivity goes up with increasing output which is inherently unstable) and there's no reason to do it if your intent does not include weapons production.

Iran claims the desire to fuel medical and research reactors (used to produce medical isotopes and similar); those are reasonable but again we get down to intent and transparency.  20% and 27% are quite a ways apart and the claim that this is an "accident" is damned unlikely.  It's far more likely that 27% was on its way to 90% when some ended up where it didn't belong and thus got "found."

This is an entirely separate issue as to whether Iran should be able to produce and have nuclear weapons.  The point here is not to moralize on that issue; it is that they have claimed they have no intention of producing them and their nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

They're lying.

Now what we, and others including Israel, intend to do about that is a separate question.  But we're no longer in the realm of trying to figure out if they have an "entirely peaceful" program.

That ship has sailed.

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User Info Ok, That's Enough (Iran And Uranium) in forum [Market-Ticker]
Tank
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October surprise?

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Goforbroke
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^ That would be mighty convenient.

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Genesis
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I don't know.

I don't think we should bomb them but I think Israel is going to. They have damned little reason not to given history.

I'd like to see Iran develop an actual peaceful nuclear program as plentiful energy at a known cost is a necessity for a stable economy. Liquid-salt Thorium reactors are one answer that does not raise material proliferation concerns and thus I favor it. Sure, you CAN pervert it but it's difficult and in addition the passive safety features of that system are of great advantage.

Unless, of course, you really WANT the option to always be there to make some boom-booms, in which case the traditional Uranium cycle wins twice -- first, it's the same thing to get 90% enrichment for a uranium bomb and second, uranium-fueled power reactors inherently produce Plutonium which can be chemically separated (much, much easier than isotopic separation!) once running for a while and that's a huge problem since there's no effective means of preventing it if the nation is technically capable of separation of the used fuel rods -- and the technical capability required is MUCH less complicated than is isotopic separation of Uranium is.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
Rocarocket
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How convenient for Israel and Obamam.
Iran just happened to leave 27% enriched uranium lying around.
Seobook
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Military submarines need to have small reactors, but outside of those enrichment is much more common in like the 2% to 3% range.
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Yep. The military tolerates the risks of using HEU because size is a problem in that application. This is not a factor for civilian power production.

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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me
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What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
Yaldor
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I agree with Gen and note that the hardest part in enrichment is to go above the 3% . The jumps from 20% to 27% to 36% to 48% are much easier. the amount of effort to get from 1% to 5% is much harder than to go from 20% to 50%

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Interesting that they discover and disclose this now, only after oil has dropped out of bed to the tune of 20%. I beleive this is solely meant to keep oil from falling back through $90 a barrel, seems desperate to me.

Now let me be very clear, I have no doubts that Iran is up to no good when it comes to the development of nuclear material for creating a bomb and I would be in favor of providing support to Israel should they decide to act. Just think the timing of this is very suspect.

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Bertdilbert
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Aside from the United States, no nation having developed nuclear weapons, has used them other than for peaceful purposes.

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There is no peaceful purpose to a nuclear weapon.

There are peaceful uses for nuclear power, but not for a nuclear weapon. By definition threatening to use one is a wartime act as is actually using one.

The "deterrence" argument doesn't change this one iota; war is war. All we're arguing over at that point is whether the act of war is defensive or offensive in character and from there whether it is justified.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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Krs, I too have noticed that any time the oil price starts to droop, the Mad Mullahs rattle their sabers until it rises. I'm not suggesting that the mullahs aren't mad, but I am suggesting that they are influenced by oil prices, as well as the voices in their heads.
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What is the HEU % threshold for sub reactors, incidentally?

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Trades50
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Quote:
but I think Israel is going to


Israel has to. When the country has been threatened by Iran it's just a matter of time.

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Genesis
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Depends on the design -- I think typical is ~80% or so. The Russkies had one blow up while refueling (hushed up but pretty nasty); they had something go wrong and managed to get a critical mass assembled while refueling due to someone doing something in the wrong order. It made a hell of a mess and while the excursion wasn't in the category of what most people would call "nuclear bomb" it ****ed with the sub and the people at the site quite royally. That's one of the (many) possible risks of using HEU in these things and is one reason why it isn't done when the intent is peaceful power production.

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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me
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What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
Abn0rmal
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Grf wrote..
What is the HEU % threshold for sub reactors, incidentally?
Almost 100%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat....
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Aha -- from a man who has seen the glow smiley

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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me
Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb.
What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
Abn0rmal
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What do you mean? I'm just good with Google searches...
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HEU is used in reactors intended to produce medical isotopes. It used to be a _very_ high enrichment, but an effort has been made to reduce it down to 20% for reasons of weapons proliferation:

Ending HEU Use in Medical-Isotope Production (PDF)

[url 'http://online.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/phys280/Spring06/archive/0602%20Reducing%20the%20Threat%20of%20HEU.pdf']

I'm not saying that the Iranians aren't enriching to 20% to have a much faster breakout capability to a fission device, but they claim to be doing it for medical isotope purposes and have permission to do so to 20% as a result. The 27% detected was a violation and may or may not be an error as they claim.
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Note, I am NOT justifying their actions in any way, but can you blame them for being scare of the US?

From what I understand, Khomeini killed the Shah's Nuke program (our buddy) and only restarted it after our actions to protect Oil tankers in the gulf (sending Iranian ships to the bottom of the sea) during the Iran/Iraq war [Which we were right to do!].

We invaded countries on both sides of them, have been doing drone flyovers in their airspace for years and have a history of messing with their governments.

'I-Am-A-Nut-Job' was elected AFTER the Iraq invasion. They were heading in a more moderate direction before that.

Would the Germans have elected Hitler if their economy had not be crushed by debts from war reparations?

If Iran does build a nuke (which is very likely) and uses it (not really likely), whose fault would that be?
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I understand that the specific origin of nuclear material samples can be determined to a high degree of certainty based on analysis of impurities/isotope fractions/etc.

At what point does this become realistically feasible? Does fuel have to "cook" inside a reactor for a while before this would work, or can it be done with freshly enriched, unused fuel? I would expect that this could NOT be done without having some "baseline" type of measurements of the enrichment/processing facility. Is this correct?

Where I'm heading with this is I wonder if there is a way to positively rule out Dimona or some other facility belonging to someone unfriendly towards Iran as a source of this "found" material.

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Genesis
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Just ****ing with 'ya Abn.

It's pretty easy to figure out where a particular sample came from.

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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me
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What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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There was a book that I had to look at that had a list of facts followed letters like (U), (N), (C), and (S) after them and I'm almost certain that the particular number Grf was asking for had a (U) but since I don't remember exactly I just posted a helpful Wikipedia link.
Seobook
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In a former life I was a reactor operator on a submarine...I didn't realize that sort of range number was in Wikipedia though. I thought such information was allegedly classified. :D
Peterm99
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Quote:
I thought such information was allegedly classified.
It almost certainly is, but only to hide it from our own citizens.

As likely with most of our classified stuff, our potential adversaries probably know it out to the 6th decimal place. smiley

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". . . the Constitution has died, the economy welters in irreversible decline, we have perpetual war, all power lies in the hands of the executive, the police are supreme, and a surveillance beyond Orwell’s imaginings falls into place." - Fred Reed
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