Iran: Wars and Rumors of War
A Pentagon official expressed fears that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz near Isfahan before the next president is sworn in. He identified two red lines. One was the delivery and installation from Russia of a new anti-aircraft weapons system in Iran, which will make an Israeli strike more difficult.
The other red line, he said, was the point at which Iran had enriched enough uranium to make a bomb, which he estimated would occur in 2009, but which Israel would want to forestall well before it was achieved.
This second "red line" is pure bullshit. There is no evidence that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade at all, much less that it is making enough highly-enriched uranium that it will be able to make a bomb in 2009.
You can't use low-enriched uranium to make a bomb. It has to be highly enriched. Iran--as far as anyone has proved--is only making the low-enriched kind, and from all accounts it isn't doing such a great job of that, either. If it made high-enriched uranium, that could be detected by the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who regularly inspect Iran's facilities. I.e., it just isn't there and the idea that Iran could have enough material to make a bomb by next year is ridiculous. Now if it turned all its centrifuges to this task, then maybe it could achieve that result, though most experts think Iran's ability to enrich is still exaggerated. It could not highly enrich without creating atomic signatures detectable by the inspectors.
The IAEA says that there is no evidence--zilch, zero, nada-- that Iran has facilities for enriching to weapons grade or that it is trying to do so. See Jason Leopold's interview with Scott Ritter
The US National Intelligence Estimate last December came to the conclusion that Iran has done no weapons-related experiments since early 2003.
Moreover, as Ritter points out, Israel likely lacks the capacity to launch an air strike on Iran in which its pilots safely return to Israel.
Even if it had the capacity, according to Beirut's Daily Star, experts think it highly unlikely that Israel would launch such a strike, given the likely reprisals it would attract from Lebanon and in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Sy Hersh reports on US covert operations inside Iran, probably aimed at uncovering more about Iran's nuclear program. I don't know. Maybe that is a good thing. Like the inspectors in Iraq in winter 2003, they probably won't find anything because there is nothing to find. Either way, genuine human intelligence would be preferable to speculation. I just hope their inability to find anything is taken more seriously this time.
A wise, even divine, man once said that there will be wars and rumors of war. To which I say that the rumors are better than the wars.
The rumors, in any case, are war by another means, since they are being used by the US and Israel to put pressure on Iran to stop its enrichment program, a program that is perfectly legal according to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
That Israel, Pakistan and India flouted the NPT and actually did make bombs is never brought up when the US makes these charges against Iran, which allows regular inspections of its facilities, and against which there is no evidence of striving for a bomb.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/01/2008 01:05:00 AM
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39 Comments:
Dear Professor Cole
I suspect we are seeing the equivalent of a maskirovka with the preparations for a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites.
Stratfor points out that it is unusual to telegraph your intention to attack a well defended target so the guys in the SAM batteries have time to get ready.
It might be useful to look at alternative targets for action such as the the missile sites on Abu Musa and the Tumbs as well as the shores of the Persian Gulf or the possibility of delaying the nuclear project by destroying the turbines at the major electricity generating sites.
Juan writes:
"Meanwhile, Sy Hersh reports on US covert operations inside Iran, probably aimed at uncovering more about Iran's nuclear program."
Juan, are you saying that the covert operations in Iran have the search for truth as one of its goals? Are you confusing Special Ops and their Iranian allies with UN weapons inspectors? Please elaborate!
Frank Brodhead, New York
Just wish to draw the attention of the interested to the availability of the documentary film "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the War in Iraq", by Robert Greenwald, on YouTube. There are at least three versions of this, one consisting of a single part, one of two shorter parts, and one of six approximately ten-minutes parts. The addresses to the first two versions are the following:
THE SINGLE-PART VERSION:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yowqX2ngHl4
THE TWO-PARTS VERSION:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7UmUomUX4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hc0WDaCqc8&feature=related
This documentary must be seen if we wish not to be mesmerized by the war propaganda this time round.
Incidentally, this documentary clearly shows that Mr Ahmad Chalabi can be rightly considered as nothing but a useful cheerleader in the whole Iraq affair; if I am not mistaken, in the entire documentary his name is mentioned only once, taking some 5 seconds time of an almost a sixty-minutes long documentary. As I emphasized earlier, insofar as the invasion and occupation of Iraq is concerned, Ahmad Chalabi is just a red herring.
Also should like to mention that Farideh Farhi has a recent piece on the website of Informed Comment: Global Affairs, dealing with a recent interview that the Commander of IRGC has given to the daily newspaper Jam-e Jam in response to the recent military threats by Israel:
http://icga.blogspot.com/
I have left a relatively long comment here that some might consider worth reading. BF
Thanks! I can't believe the bs that gets passed off as 'news' around here. I'd just read this article on another site and was thinking 'what the heck?'
For readers who don't know, 'low-enriched' is about 3% and 'bomb-grade enriched' is somewhere up around 95%. Ie, not even close.
Its amazing how a voice of power says this stuff and these guys just run off to scribe it as the greatest wisdom they've ever heard. Obviously learned nothing from the Iraq WMD. Or maybe what they learned was not to let Judy Miller push them out of line this time. Be the first on the block to print the lies that lead to another war. While wearing their flag lapel pins.
Your comment that the red line of high enrichment is "bullshit" may not really be accurate. The fact is, once you can enrich significant quantities of uranium to 4%, the distance to doing it to 80%--i.e., highly enriched--isn't that far. If you can do 4% it shows that you've gone most of the way in terms of know-how and equipment.
The Iranians made 150kg of 4% between December and May. That's significant. Put that back through the same centrifuges, and you have a lot of HEU within a year.
It may very well be that the second red line is all but crossed already, if they're capable of doing so much.
Juan,
Please read Sy Hersh's article again: its primary point is not that this covert program is looking for evidence of an Iranian nuclear program, it is that Cheney's office is trying to provoke Iran into reacting and providing Cheney-Bush with a reason to attack Iran militarily; that is much, much more serious than your post suggests. Note that the title of Hersh's piece is "Preraring the Battlefield."
"Like the inspectors in Iraq in winter 2003, they probably won't find anything because there is nothing to find."
Remember how the lack of evidence in 2003 was cited by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld as conclusive proof that Sadam had WMDs? I wonder if that logic could work again?
Former CIA operative says CIA officials ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb
Facts? Evidence? bah who needs that stuff! Onward to the Iranian Oil Fields!!!
Bush-Cheney & Israel will pump up the propaganda regardless of what the facts are, just as was done before bombing Iraq. This administration wants John McCain to be president, and this administration would commit more crimes against humanity to do so. I hope not, but I bet the plans are being fine-tuned every minute for an attack on Israel. Head for the hills!
Dear Dr. Cole,
Hersh reported not that US operatives are looking for intelligence on Iran's nuclear program but trying to get minority groups to kill Iranian police officers. How can that be a good thing? How would the US react if some huge, powerful country were openly, publicly funding certain ethnically-based gangs to kill American police officers? Do you think some American commentators might use phrases such as, "acts of war?"
Didn't some of the rumors that came after the bombing of the suspected nuclear site in Syria have to do with the Israelis testing a newly installed Russian anti-aircraft system?
I got to wonder why would an upgrade to the Iranian integrated defense network be such a bright line? After all doesn't Iran have the right (especially with a hostile nation occupying two neighboring countries and patrolling just outside its territorial waters) to have an effective deterrent. I guess deterrent now means "danger"!
But then again, Empires don't like it when their targets build up their defenses. It throws the cost-benefit out the window. I wonder how many times European Empires have used this excuse to start wars?
Also I agree with Ritter. Israel doe shave the capability to strike at Iran, but this can not be a one sortie operation (one flight to and from base) like Tunisia or Osirak. The only credible way that Israel can sustain a long range air campaign against Iran would be to overfly territory of nations that fly very similar aircraft (Turkey has F-16s, American forces in Iraq fly both the F-15 in fighter/strike fighter versions and the F-16, and the Saudis fly F-15s) so any attack coming from those directions would imply cooperation from these nations.
I just can't see Turkey doing that, they have to many problems at home and with the Kurds (an area where Iran and Turkey are somewhat allied, in the tangle web of greater Kurdistan), the Saudis certainly don't want Israelis over their skies and they caught all kinds of grief for allowing the IAF strike over Osirak, even though Saudi E-3s AWACS are "jointly" operated by the RSAF and USAF (take that for what is worth) leaving Iraqi skies the only avenue of access to to Iran (after either violating Syrian/Jordanian airspace or going north over Turkey). And I doubt that Iranians would make any distinctions between IAF aircraft and those of the nations involved.
The other alternative would be submarine launched cruise missiles. The Israeli Navy has quiet a bit of those and they might be capable of launching Tomahawk type missiles, although my guess (and this is only a guess) is that most of those missiles if they exist are part of the Israeli nuclear triad, that is equipped with nuclear warheads.
This makes for a very complicated situation. Or maybe not, if the Israeli aim is to push the Americans to do their dirty work for them, yet again.
I'm totally behind you on the important point, that a strike on Iran would be both a crime and a blunder. And in that sense both red lines are outrageous bullshit. But in the technical sense, I think you might be mispresenting the second red line. I don't think hawks are claiming that Iran has enriched any uranium to bomb level.
IIUC, when hawks say "enough enriched uranium to make a bomb" what they mean is approximately 650 kg of uranium enriched to fuel grade, i.e., 4-5 percent. IIUC, the general consensus among nuclear proliferation hawks (not all of whom are military hawks) is that once a country has managed the technical feat of turning a large amount of 0.7 percent uranium feedstock into 4-5 percent fuel-level enriched uranium, they have everything necessary in skill and equipment to accomplish the next step -- turning the fuel-level enriched uranium into bomb-level (80-90 percent) enriched uranium -- in 3 or 4 months. All they have to do is keep feeding the uranium hexafloride through over and over until it reaches the desired level of enrichment.
To make the most elementary-level atomic bomb, an implosion bomb, is said to require 20-25 kg of bomb-grade uraniaum. (A hiroshima style bomb is said to require more like 50 kg.) So what they mean by the red line is: when Iran has 650 kg (or 700 or 800 -- figures vary), then they have "enough to make a bomb" in the sense that whenever they decided to they could distill it down to 20-25kg of bomb grade in 3 or 4 months. (Judging by the math, a substantial amount seems to be lost in the process.)
my friend said that america is not like indonesia. america has no problem inside. so america makes problems outside
Mohamed elBaradei was recently qouted as saying Iran "would need at least six months to one year" to build a nucelar bomb (http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/9122). The estimated timeframe, should Iran take the decision to go nuclear, seems to be getting shorter every month. The same blog post, by the editors of Foreign Policy, quotes a recent IAEA report as accusing Iran of "persistent stonewalling." The EU has also lately turned up the pressure on Iran. All these suggest that there are strong suspicions that Iran's activities are not wholly innocuous and Iran is not being wholly open and honest about its nuclear activities and plans. If you were Israeli, would you be nervous?
Thanks for this. I and some of the others watching this have been going pretty frantic. We seem to be right back in 2002/3 as if nothing, nothing has happened. We have learned nothing. 362 is simply shocking.
It is really coming home to me now that the reason the neocons have been prevailing is simply that in a sense we have all become neocons. There is no other explanation that I can think of for the willful refusal of the great bulk of us to want anything to do with messy things like evidence, or anyone else's perspective, or resolution of disputes by any other way than 'our way or else'. They didn't arise out of nowhere and they aren't prospering without a sympathetic context.
I put it down to sleeping our way through the Iraqi holocaust without bringing anyone to account. It is just a matter of time before all the forces gather again.
Ian they certainly can't enrich it beyond the 4 or so percent they are at the moment while inside the NPT with the IAEA monitoring everything and carrying out random inspections every other week. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Iranians can enrich their contaminated uranium even to the 5% levels they are claiming (the IAEA never saw 5% in the samples according to their fall report). Iranian Uranium makes a particularly unpromising raw material for producing the highly-enriched uranium needed for weapons (see this report). There is no evidence that they even want a weapons program, and certainly not any time soon.
As professor Cole says they are performing activities that we are obliged by treaty to assist them with (though Israel is of course not so bound by treaty).
Or, as it was more succinctly and elegantly put, BS.
This is what comes of the madness of trying to follow a policy of isolating Iran. It must end in tears.
With all this punditry about when. where or how Israel will attack, no one is asking why - just as no one knows why we're at war in Iraq either.
We are being presented with a FALSE DILEMMA according to which the only options are bombing/sanctions or else Iranian nukes will come raining down on us.
This is false. Iran has made several legitimate compromise suggestions and peace offer that were endorsed by American and international experts, and which would address any REAL threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. For example, Iran offered to open its nuclear program to Western participation, thus ensuring that it could not even theoretically be used to make bombs.
And we slapped back their suggestion without even acknowledging them.
Why? Because obviously the whole "nuclear threat" is a pretext. No amount of Iranian concessions will ever suffice - we'll always move the goalposts on them and impose even more ridiculous preconditions on negotiations. That's been the pattern thus far.
Iranians can't make HEU "whenever they wants" because its enrichment facilities are under IAEA safeguards and monitorng cameras, specifically designed to discover this sort of thing. That's the whole reason why the IAEA exists. Otherwise any country with a nuclear program can supposedly make a nuke. Brazil and Argentina could make bomb too. Japan is just a long weekend away from making nukes, for example.
And the Foreign Policy blog's version of events is downright false. The IAEA report said nothing at all about "persistent stonewalling" but did say that Iran's nuclear program was continuing under safeguards and was the subject of 14 suprise inspections.
U.S. criticizes report Israel likely to attack Iran
It is most likely that the source of the original story acted on the orders of JINSA.
America must cleanse the DoD from the religous lunatics who infest several layers of the top hierarchy. People cannot get promotion without the say so of the American 'mullahs', which explains both their poor quality and brutal zeal.
"america has no problem inside" would indicate a very lacking understanding of the U.S.
As towards the propaganda regarding an Iranian airstrike, I refer others to: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062908.html
Seems the sort of play,given the 'gang of eight''s acquiescence to Bush's 'finding'.
Lastly, I would inform others of this tidbit regarding oil:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/4504
(you can click on the links to see the actual document)
Every now and then I get the idea that Iran has been the neocon target in the ME all along, and the purpose of the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation was, ultimately, to bring down Iran. Are the neocons that smart?
Dear Ian,
You are clearly unfamiliar with the technical issues involved in enrichment. The technical difficulties in the enrichment process do not increase linearly with the degree of enrichment, but exponentially (more precisely, factorially)! This is not the place for me to go into the underlying technical details, but none (absolutely none!) of the machinery that we know that Iran possesses at this moment in time will work for even getting to 10% enrichment. The fact is that there are so many traces of heavy metals mixed in the 4% enriched material (constituting 100 - 4 = 96% of the material enriched and possessed by Iran) that they clog Iran's centrifuges the moment they are switched on; these machinery are not designed and are absolutely unsuitable for producing fissile material. There are so many highly complex chemical processes involved in the enrichment above 10% that I personally am very sceptical about the prospect of Iran possessing fissile material in the coming 20 years; that Iran may have such material in 2009, or 2015, is plain scaremongering to my best judgement (at best they are very conservative estimates). I am a professional theoretical physicist and know fairly well techniques of theoretical chemistry. None of the theoretical papers that I see published by Iranian scientists suggest to me that Iranians may be working on the production of fissile material. Of course, Iran may be suppressing the pertinent publications, but as a professional I consider myself as capable of knowing Iran's scientific capability in this area (stated bluntly, the scientific base required for the task is not there). Iran's best publications (insofar as my expertise permits to judge) are in the area of so-called soft condensed matter, and I can see clearly the usefulness of this research area to Iran's petrochemical industry.
May I be so rude as to request you to inform yourself of the technical issues that are involved in enrichment process? The difficulties that hamper enrichment to high levels of purity are well documented and the pertinent publications are publicly available.
Kind regards, BF.
bwg-
please read with more care.
elBaradei's comment - in full - was that Iran would need 6 months to a year after they had begun higher enrichment activities. Such activities would be noticed right away by the IAEA inspectors. He was saying that there is no immediate threat, and any potential threat would be flagged well in advance.
The "stonewalling" accusation seems to refer to the purloined laptop computer which allegedly proves Iranian perfidy re: nuclear ambitions. Iran claims that the laptop is a forgery and thus they cannot respond to inquiries about it - which is described as stonewalling. This laptop has been presented as evidence by the same people who pushed Saddam's (nonexistent) WMD.
The EU knows there is no immediate threat, but seem to be playing along as part of a geo-political game.
Let's all hope a major world-wide conflagration isn't sparked by such childish stupidity.
if President Bush would stop this incessant, adolescent IRAN IRAN harangue, and call for all Americans to "take all measures necessary to cease or curtail the consumption of petroleum products: as a matter of National Security" imho we would be looking at ~$80/bbl oil (or less) within 90 days.
otoh, Why the American Senators Reid, Obama, etc., (including Republicans, fwiw) have not made "petroleum products" a National Security = 'support our troops' issue is a mystery to this writer. Where is the sense of outrage, indeed! Every damn day about a dozen of our people are dying or being horribly maimed for this bullshit OIL.
TIE THOSE 'YELLOW RIBBONS' AROUND THE HOSES OF YOUR PETROL STATION PUMPS!
By the logic that says that covert ops in Iran are a good thing, Iranian covert ops in Iraq would also be a good thing.
Ridiculous.
Dear BF,
I should preface my response to you by saying that I am no "hawk," I'm an American citizen quite opposed to aggressing against Iran. My expertise related to Iran has to do with language and culture, not science.
Permit me to draw your attention to this article by David Albright (no hawk--the addendum to the article is "Why Military Attack is Not an Option"):
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_11/Albright.asp
Dr. Albright says that a "breakout capability" based on accumulated LEU is within reach of the Iranian program. He writes:
-----A key milestone will be reached when Iran accumulates enough LEU to break out and relatively quickly produce weapons-grade uranium. An accumulation of approximately 700-800 kilograms of 4 percent enriched LEU would unquestionably provide it with enough LEU for a breakout capability whereby in a few months it could produce 20-25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a nuclear weapon. There would be little time for the international community to respond diplomatically, even though the IAEA would likely quickly detect any significant diversion of LEU.--------
He wrote that in November 2007. Since then, Iran has demonstrated that it can produce 30 kg of LEU, since it made 150 kg between December 2007 and May 2008. This according to the IAEA report. Assuming that the rate of production continues to increase the same as last year, that would put the "breakout capacity" point at early 2009. Perhaps not January, but not long after.
Could you post some links to the articles by Iranian nuclear scientists you've been reading? You'd be doing a service to the people reading these comments.
Again, let me conclude by saying, along with Dr. Albright, that the fact that the Iranians are already pretty much over the red line DOES NOT mean that we should use military options. Quite the opposite, and I won't rehash all the bad things that would happen as a result of an attack here.
If it were not for Sy Hersh we would not even know about these unconstitutional activities-- and his sources are inside the US military. Where are the Democrats? What I find particularly galling, is that Reid and Pelosi and Co. had to approve this illegal aggression against Iran. Why didn't they stand up and make a fuss about it? And, with all due respect Prof Cole, what do you think of their (the Dems) timidity?
I would like to add to what Howie S said, where is Obama? These days Americans are uninterested in this subject; they only understand their empty gas tanks and wallets(and soon, bellies). While media are pulling back on their Iraq reporting, more than one how-this affects-you news story has attributed the most recent rise in oil prices (everyday's lead item) to this saber-rattling over Iran. I can't believe there isn't a campaign strategy in there somewhere.
Re Ian at 8.17, David Albright has been debunked by Scott Ritter as a non-expert in nuclear matters. The Doctorate is honorary, but he does have a masters in physics! (Though not nuclear physics.)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080626_the_nuclear_expert_who_never_was/
To Ian
this article by Scott Ritter maybe of interest to you
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20
080626_the_nuclear_expert_who_never_was/
Dear Ian,
Thank you for your kind response.
I am always surprised at how our so-called experts continually expose the general public to at best half-truths and at worst outright lies. Let me consider the statement by Dr Albright that you quote. Take 800 kg of 4% enriched Uranium. Multiply 800 kg by 0.04, and you get 32 kg of pure fissile material. The critical mass for Uranium-235 is 52 kg. [I have taken Uranium-235 because it is the most abundant fissile isotope of Uranium. The critical mass for Uranium-233 is 15 kg, however if one looks at tables of Uranium isotopes, the abundancy of Uranium-233 is so small that it is not included in most of these. Here are the most abundant isotopes of Uranium: Uranium-234 (0.005%), Uranium-235 (0.72%) and Uranium-238 (99.275%). To be sure, 0.005 + 0.72 + 99.275 = 100.] The question arises as to how Dr Albright has done his/her calculations. Please note that the above calculations are utterly elementary and for carrying them out one does not need to have a PhD in physics, mathematics or any other subject matter; the mere ability to count on one’s fingers would suffice.
Let me now assume that the above-mentioned critical mass has bearing on 80% enriched material and not on 100% enriched material. We have 32 * 10/8 = 40 kg. Clearly, 40 kg of 80% enriched material is still 12 kg short of the above-mentioned 52 kg.
I do not know Dr Albright, and even less, I do not know where s/he may have earned the title “Dr”, but assuming that this person is not pursuing a political agenda, it must be evident that this person is not capable of even carrying out elementary arithmetic calculations. We, the pubic, must be critical and demand from our so-called experts to make public the considerations by which they keep scaring us to death, preparing us psychologically to bomb yet another sovereign nation to stone age. Please note that in my above calculations I took the upper bound of the range 700-800 kg given by “Dr” Albright. Had I taken the lower bound (i.e. 700 kg), I would have put “Dr” Albright and her/his ilk to a greater shame. As an aside, where has “Dr” Albright his/her “20-25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium’’ from? Methinks this is outright fraud.
Incidentally, to my best knowledge the exact amount of fissile material required for making a working atomic bomb is classified (what is certain, is that this amount cannot be less than the critical mass). It is conceivable that for a working atomic bomb one needs, say, 80 kg of Uranium-235 --- the 80 kg of fissile material is divided into two pieces (each under-critical, since 40 < 52) which are brought together in the process of ignition. To appreciate this fact, the agreement between the USA and Russia for inspecting each other’s stock piles of nuclear material/weapons contains an explicit clause which precludes exact mass measurements; I seem to remember that the accuracy of these measurements must not exceed 80%. One should realize that a nuclear bomb that is not capable of going critical is utterly useless as a weapon: it will cause a relatively weak explosion (as a result of an initial short-lived under-critical chain reaction --- the explosion is brought about by a sudden thermal expansion of the material, causing a shock wave), leading to a radioactive contamination of a relatively small area around the explosion site.
In my above calculations, I took for granted the assumption that Iran had the technical and scientific capability of converting 800 kg of the material that is enriched to 4% to 100% , or 80%, pure Uranium-235. If you re-read my previous Comment, you will realize that my basic argument there was that to my best knowledge Iran at present does not possess the technical ability and the scientific base for carrying out this conversion. In other words, no matter what quantity of 4% enriched Uranium-235 Iran may possess (let us assume 8000 kg, instead of “Dr” Albright’s 800 kg), Iran to my best knowledge does not possess the expertise to convert this amount of material into even 1 kg of bomb-grade material. The fact is that none of the steps in the cascade of physical and chemical processes that are required for producing fissile material can be skipped over, and this is why the complexity of making fissile material is almost infinitely more than that involved in making 4% enriched material. You could liken the situation with that of cracking a code that is 100 bits long; knowing 4 bits of this code is almost nothing in comparison with knowing all the 100 bits of the code. I doubt that the present American Administration is willing, if at all capable of, to contemplate these crucial issues.
You ask me to name some names. I cannot do that, as by doing so I will be crossing a line that I cannot cross on ethical grounds (I am not in the business of naming names). If you are associated with any research Institute dealing with issues related to proliferation problems, you could always commission a research into the scientific publications by the scientists residing in Iran. As I wrote in my previous message, in my personal day-to-day research I encounter from time-to-time some publications by Iranian scientists. My personal judgement is (as I explained in my previous Comment) that none of these publications suggest to me that Iran may be on the path of producing fissile material. I may be mistaken (simply because I have never done any systematic study of the Iranian scientific publications), however as the above simple calculations may have made clear, I seem to be infinitely more knowledgeable on these issues than “Dr” Albright and a host of other darlings of our public media. I should like to emphasize that even a small amount of knowledge is infinitely more than utter ignorance, whether genuine or contrived. You should consider the qualification “infinitely more knowledgeable” in this light, as I am not so immodest as to qualify myself even as knowledgeable.
Yours sincerely,
BF.
I encounter references to the "laptop", allegedly containing information concerning design of nuclear weapons by Iranian scientists, with undiminished regularity. I feel therefore compelled to mention what I do know about this mysterious laptop. To my best knowledge, experts examining this laptop have not found a single Persian word on the hard disc of this laptop! This is strange, since it is safe to assume that a state intent on *secretly* developing nuclear weapons does not hire foreigners on the pertinent programs. Since it is theoretically possible that the Iranian scientist to whom this laptop allegedly belongs may not have been using Persian in her/his daily occupation, elsewhere I have suggested that the texts found on the hard disc of this laptop be subjected to a linguistic analysis. Such an analysis is capable of determining whether these texts have been written by an Iranian or a non-Iranian. The technology for this task is widely available and is in fact used by anti-crime/fraud agencies the world over. In language departments of universities, this technology is used to determine whether a particular disputed text has been written by, for instance, Shakespeare or Marlowe.
BF.
Perhaps BF can explain to us lemmings how Little Boy was able to destroy Hiroshima with less than 52kg of U-235.
-- Andy
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1937/von-hippel-on-albright?commented=0
Dear Andy,
You can read a relatively detailed account of "Little Boy" (what a cynical name to give to a weapon of mass destruction!) in the following article of the English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_boy
As you will see, in contrast to your statement, "Little Boy" used 64.1 kg of Uranium-235 (consisting of a "gun" with a mass of 38.5 kg U-235 and a "target" with a mass of 25.6 kg U-235 --- these are speculated data, as the actual data remain classified to this date) of which only 0.7 kg underwent nuclear fission and of this 0.6 g was transformed into energy. Clearly, 64.1 > 52, where 52 kg is the critical mass of Uranium-235, as mentioned in my earlier Comment. It is not clear to me on which ground your claim "with less than 52 kg U-235" can be based. I feel therefore compelled to emphasise that I was not attempting to mislead.
To understand why so relatively small amount of mass is converted into energy (0.6 g out of 64.1 kg --- thanks God!), one will have to understand the dynamics of the whole process which is very complicated both to describe and to calculate. This is why the most powerful supercomputers are in the possession of such laboratories as Argonne National Laboratory:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7443557.stm
Using the celebrated Einstein's formula E = m c^2, for 0.6 g, or 0.0006 kg, with c = 3 * 10^8 m/s, one obtains E = 5.4 * 10^13 J. Approximately 4 Jules make one calorie and 10^5 calories raise the temperature of one litre of water from freezing temperature to boiling temperature. The amount E = 5.4 * 10^13 J is therefore the energy that brings 1.35 * 10^8 litres (or 1.35 * 10^5 = 135,000 cubic meters) of freezing water to boiling. The volume required for accommodating this amount of water is a 51 meter by 51 meter by 51 meter cubic-shaped pool.
Lastly, following your Comment you give an address to a page where apparently Frank von Hippel showers praise on David Albright. I have now read this peace and am not impressed by it; frankly, it is an utterly vacuous piece.
Yesterday, after submitting my Comment, I noticed two Comments by "Alex" and "tishmort" (just preceding my previous Comment on this page), referring to a recent article by Scott Ritter. In the meantime I have read Scott Ritter's piece and fully concur with his statements with regard to David Albright (before reading this article I was not aware of the existence of a physicist by the name David Albright - Scott Ritter's piece clarified why); something is clearly amiss when a "Dr", who further claims to be a "Nuclear Expert", proves unable to carry out a simple multiplication. Now, this person may be excused for having made a miscalculation (in my opinion this is inexcusable, since this miscalculation is likely to cost human lives), but how can one understand such fraudulent statements as "20-25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a nuclear weapon"? How can "Dr" Albright make an atomic bomb with 20-25 kg of U-235? In this connection, the following is remarkable: the ratio 700/800 is equal to 0.875 and the ratio 20/25 equal to 0.8. The closeness of the two ratios (ideally, the two ratios must be equal) leads me to believe that this "Nuclear Expert" may have no conception of the physics underlying a nuclear bomb. May be I am not well informed, that there are ways to make an atomic bomb with 20-25 kilograms of U-235, in which case
"Dr" Albright is duty-bound to explain to us the underlying physical principles.
Kind regards,
BF.
Dear Andy,
I just noticed that the page of which you had given the address contained a reproduction of my yesterday's Comment on this page, uploaded by Mark Konrad. In response, Jeffrey Lewis writes "BF is a good example of the sort of person who hasn't the slightest idea of what he is talking about, but feels totally comfortable calling Albright names". I have no time to join yet another discussion group, but you may care kindly to ask Jeffrey Lewis the basis for his wild assertion. What aspect in my argument was indicative of not having the "slightest idea" of the issue at hand? I presented a considerable amount of details, but what is the basis of the ungentlemanly assertion by Jeffrey Lewis? It is very cheap to sling mud, but real gentlemen argue gentleman-like. Where has Jeffrey Lewis his apparently infinite wisdom from? (Never have seen a single publication on his name in a refereed journal.) I hereby challenge him to face me like a gentleman and qualify his cheap and vacuous assertion if he is one.
Two things. Firstly, I did not name names; I said that I did not know Dr Albright, which was absolutely true. Secondly, I said three important things, and thus far no one (including Jeffrey Lewis) has proved me wrong: I said that (1) 700-800 times 0.04 gives 28-32 and not 20-25; (2) that the critical mass of U-235 is 52 kg and not somewhere between 20-25 kg; and that (3) even though 700-800 kg of material that is enriched to 4% gives 28-32 kg of 100% enriched material, no one has shown that Iran is capable of enriching even beyond 10%; it is a well-known fact that the machinery that Iran possesses are not suitable for making highly-enriched Uranium, leaving aside the fact that Iran has no knowledge of the cascade of the chemical processes that are required for making highly-enriched Uranium.
Before closing, I draw your attention to my previous Comment in which I have answered the question that you posed to me with regard to "Little Boy".
Kind regards,
BF.
BF,
This is the "Andy" from ACW, though I didn't post my own quote above - someone else did.
The 52kg figure for U-235 may be the textbook answer you got from wikipedia, but that figure is not fixed nor invariable and can be modified by a variety of factors - factors which Albright and virtually anyone with a passing interest in nuclear weapons understands. Similarly, Plutonium has a critical mass of around 10kg (depending on isotope), yet very few weapon designs require that much plutonium and designs utilizing as little as 1kg are theoretically possible (if not a reality in some DOE lab). Most plutonium weapons use around 5-6kg of plutonium and that figure is commonly cited by nuclear experts (and not just Albright) just as the 10-15k of uranium is cited as the amount required for a basic weapon. (And for the record, Little-boy had had about 64kg of 80% enriched uranium which means it had about 48kg of U-235 - below your 52kg threshold. Similarly, Fat Man used much less than 10kg of plutonium.)
So in this case Albright is correct and you are not. You claim Albright is "duty bound to explain the underlying physical principles." If he has made a mistake here it is in assuming those reading his work have a basic understanding of how nuclear weapons work or the capacity to inform themselves. So Dr. Lewis, myself and others over at ACW have to laugh in amazement at your post and ignorant claim that Albright is an "outright fraud" because a 10-15kg uranium weapons is impossible.
Finally, as why nuclear weapons do not need the minimum textbook critical mass here is a very simple primer that explains the biggest factors for you. Here's another one. Have fun learning.
Andy
BF,
Your comments on nuclear weapons is completely incorrect.
1) You seem to think that Little Boy had a single critical mass.
Nonsense.
It contained 2.5 critical masses - otherwise it would not explode, just melt.
Your 52 kilograms is based upon BARE SPHERE U235.
Fissile materials, such as U235 or Pu239, whether in a bomb or a reactor, is -> ALWAYS <- wrapped in a reflector/tamper which acts as a neutron "mirror". The critical mass of the 80% enriched U235 in Little Boy was only 25 kilograms.
In an excellent reflector - a few inches of natural uranium or beryllium -, the critical mass is less than 15 kilograms.
Beyond that, these numbers are for UNCOMPRESSED fissiles - relevant only to primitive Uranium Guns that do not implode the fuel.
When compressed, just a few kilograms of fissile are sufficient to be super-critical.
Fat Man, which only carried about one critical mass before detonation, reached about four critical masses in the compressed core - THATS THE WHOLE POINT!.
2) Your concept of uranium enrichment is completely backwards. Enrichment is somewhat paradoxial. It is VASTLY easier to go from low-enriched-uranium (LEU) to Highly-enriched-Uranium (HEU) than to go from natural uranium to LEU.
You obviously are ignorant of that basic fact.
More than 80% of the enrichment work (called separative work units or SWU) goes in enriching natural 0.71% Uranium to 4% LEU. The next 20 percent is a cinch. That is why the UN is trying to stop Iran from creating LEU. Their stockpile would allow a "break-out" to a bomb in only a few weeks by feeding the LEU back into the cascades.
The comments at ACW are based upon your simply astonishing lack of the most basic knowledge of subjects that you pontificate upon at length.
- yale
Andy and Yale:
Since my response to your two Comments is rather extensive, I subdivide this response into relatively short sections. I hope that this facilitates reading.
1. GENERAL REMARKS
In your comments you repeatedly accuse me of being “ignorant” and further indicate that my earlier Comments had induced laughter in you, unaware that I am generally disposed to view self-serving laughter as the crackling of thorns under a pot. Are you truly as knowledgeable in the subject matter as you so blatantly profess to be?
Let me start with Andy who has been less hostile in his response. Andy you provide me with two references that are supposed to enlighten me. The first is the following:
http://www.nuclearthreatinitiative.org/e_research/official_docs/norway/HEU_as_Weapons_Material.pdf
The text, which has no named author (hear-hear!), consists of two pages. It contains nothing but platitudes. Two things in this document may be worth mentioning however. Firstly, Figure 2 in this document shows that without taking any special measures, Iran will not be able to make any nuclear device with even 32 kg of 100% enriched U-235. Secondly, in the last three lines of the document, on its page 2, it is mentioned that:
“with a 10 cm natural Uranium temper the critical mass of a bare sphere of U-235 reduces to less than one third: 15 kg.”
For this claim reference is made to a document, dated 1990, that is supposedly in the possession of a Swedish Institute. I have no way of verifying that this report even exists, and similarly that the alleged findings reported in it were correct (I shall come to this issue later in this Comment). Essential is that this report has no named author. As we shall see, this turns out to be the rule rather than an exception in the field where you, Andy, and Yale, profess to be experts.
Have you ever heard of “Cold Fusion”? Have you ever heard of Jan Hendrik Schön of Bell Labs-Lucent Technologies? If not, you might like to make an enquiry into the things that in particular Jan Hendrik Schön accomplished over a considerable period of time (if my memory is not failing, in less than two years he published some 20 papers in Science and Nature, all of which later proved to be fabricated; I believe that in this period he published in total close to 80 papers, almost all based on fabricated data).
The second reference provided by Andy is the following:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/a-bomb.htm
This document repeats almost exactly the details contained in the previous report, without citing the latter report, or any other publication for that matter. This document has, similar to the previous one, no named author! The website hosting this document turns out to be maintained by a person named John Pike, whom I do not know as a physicist or mathematician. He presents his background in a page filled with self-congratulatory remarks, such as “Pike regularly provides commentary and analysis on space and security issues to …”. All may be true and fine and he may be a great man, however for me these qualifications carry absolutely no weight. My search of all journals of the American Physical Society returned no paper with an author named John Pike. My further search with the aid of ISI Web of Knowledge (one of the most popular search engines used in the academia) also returned no scientific paper published by an author named John Pike. Although Google Scholar returns some John Pikes, none seem to be the John Pike of the website under consideration.
To summarise, Andy has provided me with two references in support of the unsubstantiated assertions by David Albright, and it turns out that from the academic standpoint these references are utterly and absolutely worthless.
Now I turn to Yale. On which basis are your claims based? To my best judgement almost everything concerning nuclear devices are classified, so unless you provide me with references to publications in peer-reviewed journals, I have no option but to place your assertions in the same category as those by Andy and David Albright. No matter how much you denigrate me as being “ignorant”, or my knowledge on enrichment as being “backward”, it is not the tradition in my field of expertise to accept assertions through intimidation. I am prepared to consider publications in Physical Review D and/or Nuclear Physics B and should these support your assertions, I shall retract all my statements concerning David Albright. Should you fail to provide me with the above-mentioned publications, I have no option but to declare your statements as unreliable as those by David Albright and his ilk.
Andy and Yale, please note that whether knowingly or inadvertently you have created a maze of circular arguments which turn out to have no basis in the objective reality: you derive authority for a set of assertions by relying on “publications” by unnamed authors, that contain the same set of assertions expressed in different terms. This is the worst type of sophistry that I have ever encountered in my entire life. How can you expect that people (general public, of which I am a member) take you seriously? Your diatribe, and the whole posturing surrounding it, had been a joke, were it not that the situation at hand is so deadly serious.
Following your comments, yesterday I visited the website ACW where I read the CV of Jeffrey Lewis. The same site led me to some publications by him which I have also read, insofar as they were publicly available. I do not know you, Andy and Yale, but if you share the same academic background as Jeffery Lewis, I sincerely believe that none of you has the training and academic qualifications that are necessary for discussing matters nuclear. You may be able to talk about these matters in general terms, and possibly intimidate people who challenge your world views by employing ridicule and character assassination, but in essence you are outsiders, with no working experience in what constitutes physics in general and nuclear physics in particular (in none of the publications by Jeffrey Lewis that I have read have I been able to detect a single mathematical expression). I admit that owing to your social positions you may be privy to some issues that are classified facts, however you cannot reasonably expect others to accept your assertions because you are who you are. For instance, it is utterly irrelevant to the subject matter at issue which Fellowships you folk have held and where you folk are presently Directors. This is not the way things work in the academic environment known to me. In this environment, claims count for nothing if not supported by rigorous mathematical proofs and undisputed experimental observations. Moreover, in this environment, papers that have no named authors and/or do not contain appropriate citations to reliable sources have no value, whatsoever.
I am utterly dumbfounded that none of our “nuclear experts’’ has a proper grounding in physics. How can our policy makers on nuclear issues solely rely on the qualitative analyses by individuals whose formal educations have been in, for instance, History or Philosophy?
It is my considered opinion that you are not qualified either to support or to oppose David Albright. We should stop behaving so parochially! If you believe I am doing you injustice, please provide me with some references of your publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals (such as Physical Review D and Nuclear Physics B, two of the best journals in the field). You would not undertake to carry out a brains surgery, so what is that makes you believe that you can have any opinion on matters nuclear? It is high time that we pay serious attention to these vital facts. I must emphasise that personally I take the problem of proliferation, whether nuclear or biological, very seriously, as the prospects of human life on Earth depends on the way we treat these problems.
2. TECHNICAL DETAILS
2.1. Introductory remarks
Let us put Plutonium aside, firstly because Iran does not possess this material (the Arak facility is not even operational and, further, the spent fuel rods of the Bushehr reactor, when this becomes operational, will be taken back to Russia), and secondly because on the fundamental level my following arguments concerning Uranium equally apply to Plutonium. I should like to point out that although in one of my earlier Comments on this page I had explicitly referred to the relatively small critical mass of Plutonium (i.e. 10 kg), for reasons that seem to me to be psychological, you, Andy and Yale, do not hesitate repeatedly to remind me, and other readers, of this number, as though I had suggested that the value for critical mass were a constant of nature, the same for all fissile material. It should be evident that none of my earlier comments had bearing on nuclear devices based on Plutonium (I was just responding to a quotation from David Albright’s article on this page which deals with devices based on U-235).
Two further introductory remarks. Firstly, with regard to the critical mass of U-235 under normal conditions, I do not wish to argue whether it is 52 kg or 48 kg (I cannot haggle about data that are in principle classified). As you can verify, in my original analysis I explicitly took into account the possibility that 52 kg might as well correspond to an alloy containing 80% of U-235. I further said that even in this case one was short of the critical mass by 12 kg. Secondly, with regard to David Albright being an "outright fraud", this is not my wording, but yours! My exact wording was that the statement
“An accumulation of approximately 700-800 kilograms of 4 percent enriched LEU would unquestionably provide it with enough LEU for a breakout capability whereby in a few months it could produce 20-25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a nuclear weapon.’’,
was an “outright fraud”. In other words, I did not declare a person, be it David Albright or some other individual, but a statement, as a fraud, which, as I have indicated above and will discuss in some detail below, I maintain to be the case. Of course, my statement may be interpreted differently by different people, but strictly speaking nowhere did I equate Albright with a fraud.
2.2. Details
Concerning critical mass, I was well aware of the issues regarding variability of critical mass with variations of external conditions, on account of the fact that basic principles of thermodynamics and critical phenomena hold here as elsewhere (e.g., the boiling temperature of water depends on the ambient pressure, and the transition temperature of a superconductor depends on its geometry). What I was not aware of, is related to the statement that through some variations of geometry and positioning of reflecting mirrors, the critical mass of U-235 can be reduced from 52 kg to 15 kg. For the reasons that I have presented above, and on the basis of the details that I shall present below, at present I consider this statement as unreasonable and thus highly questionable.
In one of the references given by Andy, it is mentioned that the critical mass decreases as the inverse of the square root of the density. This result can at best correspond to an infinitely large sample, and not to a finite sample whose specific geometry has supposedly a considerable influence on the value of the critical mass. Now let us assume that this result is reasonably accurate also for a finite piece of U-235.
I do not know the bulk modulus B of U-235 at, say, the normal atmospheric pressure, but let us for argument’s sake take it to be equal to 1 * 10^12 dynes/cm^2 (I believe that this amounts to an underestimation of the actual value for B). For comparison, the bulk modulus of Copper, which is a soft and malleable metal, is equal to 1.3 * 10^12 dynes/cm^2. For small and isotropic deviation of the volume from its equilibrium value, the corresponding change of the equilibrium pressure is approximately equal to the relative volume change times the bulk modulus. Denoting the initial and final volumes by V1 and V2, and the corresponding pressures by P1 and P2, one more precisely has P2-P1 = B ln(V1/V2) . Since B= 10^12 dynes/cm^2 is equal to approximately 10^6 atmospheric pressure, and since ln(2) is approximately equal to 0.7, reduction of the volume of a piece of U-235 by a factor of 2 is demanding of a pressure equal to 0.7 * 10^6 times the atmospheric pressure (or, 70 Giga Pascal, GPa). For completeness, since I am dealing with the linear elasticity theory, the above expression is valid for small variations of volume from its equilibrium value; this relationship becomes invalid for large deviations of V from this value, as for large deviations the dependence of B on V cannot be neglected (I shall return to this aspect later).
Density, or concentration, n is here equal is the number of atoms N per volume V, that is 1/n = V/N. With N constant, a decrease in V by 2, leads to an increase in n by 2. With the square root of 2 being approximately equal to 1.4, it follows that for a reduction of V by a factor of 2 (i.e. for V1/V2 = 2), the critical mass 52 kg should become 37 kg. It follows that in order to reduce the critical mass from 52 kg to 37 kg, the nuclear charge must be subjected to a pressure equal to 7,000,000 times the atmospheric pressure. I emphasize, as before, that for such a large amount of volume change the linear elasticity theory becomes highly inaccurate, if not entirely incorrect (see later).
After the above exercise, one readily calculates that for reducing the critical mass from 52 kg to 15 kg, the volume of the nuclear charge must be reduced by a factor of 12, requiring approximately a pressure equal to 2.5 * 10^6 times the atmospheric pressure. Most certainly, the linear elasticity theory fails for such a large deformation. I shall return to this point later, but for now it is important to realise that a pressure like 2.5 * 10^6 times the atmospheric pressure (that is 250 GPs) is in the upper range of the pressures that are realised in laboratory experiments between diamond anvils, involving very small surfaces of approximately 1 mm^2.
One can gain some insight into the functional dependence of the (equilibrium) bulk modulus B for variations in volume V as follows (assuming, as before, that volume is decreased isotropically). For decreasing values of V, the density of valence electrons increases so that the negatively-charged electrons become increasingly less effective in screening the repulsive electrostatic interaction potential of the positively-charged ions. This can be appreciated by considering the simple Thomas-Fermi theory of screening. Neglecting the screening due to electrons, at very high pressures one can consider the assembly of positively charged ionic cores as constituting a gas of charged particles, with electrons playing only the role of a charge-neutralising background. Under such circumstances, one may use the expression for B corresponding to a free gas of positively-charged ions, from which one deduces that B increases like 1/V^{5/3} for decreasing values of V. For illustration, the average distance between electrons in Sodium, Na (say, under 1 atmospheric pressure) is equal to 3.9 in atomic units. For electrons in Aluminium, Al, this distance is equal to 2.1 in atomic units. One has B(Na) = 6.4 * 10^10 dynes/cm^2 and B(Al) = 7.6 * 10^11 dynes/cm^2 (notice the rapid increase with the increase in density). These are experimental data. Using the simple expression for B pertaining to the electron gas, one has B(Na) = 9.2 * 10^10 dynes/cm^2 and B(Al) = 2.3 * 10^12 dynes/cm^2. One sees that this simple theory is capable of reproducing the order of magnitude of B rather accurately.
Following the above details, when the volume of U-235 is isotropically decreased by a factor of 12, the B used in the above calculation is to be multiplied by 12^(5/3), which is approximately equal to 63, a magnification of the order of 10^2. Consequently, the pressure 2.5 * 10^6 times atmospheric pressure, calculated above, must be changed into 1.6 * 10^8 times the atmospheric pressure, that is 16,000 GPa, or 16 Terra Pascal, TPa, a value far in excess of the pressure in the centre of the Earth which is equal to 360 GPa. With 2^(5/3) approximately equal to 3.2, the pressure 0.7 * 10^6, calculated above (required for reducing the critical mass of U-235 from 52 kg to 37 kg), must be changed into 2.2 * 10^6 times the atmospheric pressure, or 220 GPa, very close to the pressure at the centre of Earth.
Given the above simple considerations, I very much doubt that the pressures required for substantially reducing the critical mass of U-235 can be sustained by any large cavity, sufficiently large to accommodate a nuclear charge of the order of 20-50 kg and all the other peripheral objects. I am therefore extremely sceptical that a reduction of the critical mass from 52 kg to 15, or even to 37 kg, can be realised in practice. If the reported reduction (as reported in the shabby references provided by Andy) is not a hoax, my suspicion is that this reduction must have been deduced on the basis of an extrapolation procedure, and not on the basis of a real experiment (that is, one may have extrapolated values for the critical mass at relatively small values of pressure to the above-mentioned large values of pressure --- I am not aware of any unclassified experiment based on pressures as high as 1 TPa). For clarity, extrapolation schemes that are not based on physical considerations (i.e. well-established scaling laws) are not part of science; at best, they may be considered as part of cabala.
2.3. Analysis
Let us now for argument’s sake assume that the critical mass of U-235 can be reduced from 52 kg to 37 kg. This value is larger than what Iran can theoretically and under the ideal conditions produce. Most importantly, even if Iran were able to produce this amount of pure U-235, the question arises as to whether Iran can be considered as technically capable of manufacturing a large cavity that would accommodate both 37 kg of nuclear charge and sustain a pressure close to that in the centre of the Earth. Note that the total force exerted on the interior of the cavity is equal to pressure times its surface area. It is therefore not warranted to assume that Iran might be able to construct a nuclear device solely on the basis of the consideration that she might produce a certain amount of fissile material. It is of utmost importance that one also considers the totality of the technology that is required for manufacturing very sophisticated devices, devices that we do not know with any certainty that even the nuclear-armed states can manufacture at the present time. As I have explained above, an obscure report, whose contents we do not know, and further has no identifiable author, cannot serve as the basis for making informed decisions.
The IAEA inspection reports pertaining to Iran do not suggest that Iran might be so advanced in materials science as to be able to realise the most speculative ideas concerning construction of small nuclear devices. One should in particular note that Iran is not in possession of any powerful radiation source or any particle source. In comparison with the Western industrialised countries, Iran has very little. One must therefore be living in Alice’s Wonderland even to speculate that devices whose actual existence is highly doubtful, can be manufactured by Iran.
Above, I used a simple linear elasticity theory. Theoretically, a great deal of relevant information concerning the physics of a nuclear device can be deduced from its so-called equation of state. Accurate determination of the equation of state of such device, and corresponding to various geometries, requires availability of very powerful supercomputers (recall the terra-flop supercomputers that the defence-related laboratories in America acquire), access to highly sophisticated numerical algorithms as well as to very specialised experimental and industrial facilities (the reliability of the outcomes of theoretical simulations must always be checked against a representative set of experimental data). Does Iran possess any of these facilities?
Given the above facts, it is only reasonable to assume that if Iran ever builds a nuclear devise (and this is a very big if to my best judgement), it will be of the most primitive of its kind. Please note that, Iran being under a systematic inspection of the IAEA, Iranian scientists do not have the luxury and freedom for being extravagant.
3. REMARKS ADDRESSED EXPLICITLY TO YALE
(1) Your suggestion is not correct. Your very statement is contained in the Wikipedia article and irrespective of my general knowledge of the issue at hand, I was aware of the contents of this article when I cited it in my Comment. As for the BARE SPHERE, above I have already responded to this question. You, and Alex, prove to be utterly oblivious to the physical implications of the wild and unsubstantiated statements that you derive from shabby reports, which might as well be planted by parties intent on inflicting death and destruction on yet another sovereign nation (as I have repeatedly emphasised, a document whose author is unknown has no scientific validity).
As for the role of reflector, I have no way of verifying your quantitative statements, not least because the exact relevant data are not available to general public, not even those data that pertain to “Little Boy”. It is conceivable that erroneous data may be sent out intentionally for confusing the states that might be intent on making nuclear devices.
Moreover, you talk about “reflector” and the like as though design of such a thing were trivial. Although having access to the necessary experimental and theoretical data may render design and manufacturing of a reflector relatively easy, as I argued above, insofar as we know Iran does not have access to these data and the required laboratories.
Above I presented a relatively detailed account concerning the compressed and uncompressed states of U-235. The precise information concerning these states is contained in the equation of state to which I have referred above.
(2) My understanding of the enrichment process may be “backward”, however what I wrote in my Comments consisted of my best knowledge on the issue. The pieces that I have read unequivocally state that unless Iran receives technical support from a third country, such as Russia, on her own she will not be able to go above the present level of enrichment any time soon. The centrifuges that they presently possess are all useless for further enrichment --- as I wrote earlier, Iranians have no idea of how to get rid of the plethora of the heavy metals that are mixed in the 4% enriched material.
You must be ashamed of yourself for calling people “ignorant” while whatever “knowledge” that you profess to have of the subject matter proves to be paper thin --- you have not proved able to cite a single scientific paper, which helps me appreciate your intellectual affinity with the Albrights of this world. If I am “ignorant” in any demonstrable sense (and I have never claimed to be all-knowing), it is not for any lack of interest: as a member of public, I have no access to classified information, and the reports by, say, David Albright read like gossip columns of red-top newspapers, verbiage conveying no useful information. Presumably you expect that we, the public, must take for granted what you and a small band of people claim to be right. You attempt to derive credence for the assertions by Albright without presenting a single verifiable source, such as a paper published in Physical Review D or Nuclear Physics B.
If you believe that I “pontificated at length”, at least I presented you with something to object to. On the other hand, I can do nothing with your statements. You just presented some assertions, such as that going from 4% to highly-enriched Uranium were a “cinch”. What can I do with all of these unfounded claims? If you have a valid point, please hire a professional nuclear physicist who is acceptable to all parties concerned and commission that he write a scientific report, with equations, graphs, tables, etc., and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, such as Physical Review D and Nuclear Physics B. I can do nothing, and absolutely nothing, with your present statements and the official reports by David Albright. The following report of Albright’s:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/expcontrol/Advanced_Bomb_16June2008.pdf
reads just like an inferior fiction story (and I do not mean to be offensive, I am only calling a spade a spade). What can one do with this "report"? Surely, you are not claiming that Albright has brought a new religion and we must believe in his revelations? I want to see a technical report, the details of which I can verify with pen and pencil on a piece of paper and if necessary evaluate some equations on my desktop.
BF.
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