TA-ANALYSIS: Iran Wants Nukes by January

I for one would like to welcome our new nuclear-powered Islamic overlords.

Muhahaaahahaaaa, chuh.

Presently operating nuclear reactors in Iran can
have thorium rods inserted into them for neutron
irradiation, resulting in transmutation of the thorium
to uranium 233, an excellent alternative nuclear
weapon material. Unlike uranium 235 that requires
rather sophisticated equipment to separate the
isotope from mined raw uranium, U233 can be
easily separated and purified chemically from bulk
thorium after irradiation. A fusion boosted insertion
design could be fabricated by January, sufficiently
powerful to level any city in Israel. Once Iran has
one or more of the weapons, the balance of power
will shift radically. Israel and the US government
realize this, therefore expect the nuclear reactors in
Iran to be destroyed before then.

Mockan, a few questions:

How big is the equipment used to create this material? Essentially, is it mobile?

Considering Iran knows they may be attacked for creating these weapons, wouldn't they keep the operation mobile if at all possible, kind of like the MX missile concept?

Could a U-233 bomb be deployed on Iran's available missiles?

Last I had heard Iran was spending considerable amount of time and money to build this facilities under ground. They expect that 10s of meters of earth will help protect them.

But an Israeli fired US bunker buster may just do the trick.

Uh-huh. It's also possible that the centrifuge lab is a 20' x 20' room in areinforced elevator that can be sunk 200 feet below the laboratory floor with 10 seconds notice. If you perform an air strike and you don't get the nebby, you are worse off than before the strike. It's not so easy as pressing a button and the Persians are not retards.

Oh, I agree that the Iranians do not suffer from mental deficiency. The possibility of the effectivness of an Israeli strike on the Iraninan nuke facilities has also been greatly debated on here.
The point I was trying to make, and you helped to eleborate on, is that the Iraninas have taken precautions to protect these facilities because they realize they are targets.

According to one of the articles I read, the bunker busters can only penetrate 15 feet of fortifications (concrete?).

It shouldn't be that difficult for Iran to build 5 meter thick walls and ceilings for their nuclear program.


Reuters
The Pentagon said in June it was considering the sale to Israel of 500 BLU-109 warheads, which can penetrate five metres (15 feet) of fortifications, in a package meant to "contribute significantly to U.S. strategic and tactical objectives".

[edit on 3-10-2004 by AceOfBase]

I see almost no way a single strike would be effective. The situation with Iran is not like the one with Iraq where Iraq was fully reliant on foreign technicians and materiale to have nuclear capability, so that one strike essentially removes that.

Unless a bombing strike takes out all of Iran's Uranium and technicians, they will simply pick up the process again.

Having worked with a variety of inorganic chemicals in my
hobby of separating and purifying the essential components
of earth ores in order to identify the elements present, I
would say the equipment needed could well be mobile.
(Don't be mislead by the word "hobby". Give me a rock
and I can make a percentage analysis of all elements present
in it, tell you if it is worth processing as an ore, and provide
a cost analysis of the processing procedure. If it were a
thorium sample containing uranium 233, it could also be
separated and purified without difficulty. This is not to say
the actual building of a nuclear weapon would be easy, but
well within the capability of a nuclear engineer). In fact given
that one would avoid working with large volumes of
solution prior to extractive separation due to the nuclear
nature of the material (a sufficient volume of solution would
become critical and although it would not explode, could
easily heat rapidly while emitting neutrons that would kill
people exposed to them) small quantities would be
processed to purify the U233 anyway. The actual casting of
the element into the approximate dimensions of the insertion
design components, with subsequent machining to the final
form, is common industrial engineering. A little procedure
complexity would be added by the need to prevent the
weapon from having a premature detonation, but this is not
an unusual consideration in the nuclear industry when
working with nuclear material. And yes, Iran has rockets
capable of carrying such a weapon. Indeed insertion
designs have been used for nuclear artillery shells, so either
rockets or cannon could deliver them. With fusion boosting
the kill radius could be extended to that of the Nagasaki
bomb, at only a fraction of the total weight.