No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Open Thread Thursday – the nuclear edition

by @ 9:16 on February 11, 2010. Filed under Open Thread Thursday, War.

This is the Emergency Blogging System. It has been activated because the Iranians supposedly are “nuclear”. We’ll discuss that after we bring back one of the old Scramble songs…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wafLyT451o[/youtube]

The first thing to remember is that the Iranians have had a bit of a history of overstating technological achievements. However, given that the Mad Mullahs that run Iran see the US as the Great Satan and have vowed to extinguish both the US and Israel by every means available, it is prudent to treat the news as credible.

They claimed to have achieved 20% uranium-235 enrichment. That is far beyond what the typical reactor needs, though there are certain types of reactors that do use it, mostly Japanese- and Russian-design fast/breeder reactors. The Iranians claim to want to use it in a research reactor to produce medical isotopes; however, this appears to be the first time the existence of that “reactor” has been mentioned. Also, there are doubts on whether the Iranians can create fuel rods out of 20% 235U.

20% 235U enrichment also is significantly below the standard for nuclear weapons. However, it can be fashioned into a crude and huge weapon suitable for shipment in a transport container or cargo plane.

And now this thread is yours. This concludes the Emergency Broadcast System portion of this post.

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