From today’s crackpot of the day, Vicki via yahoo.com:
Shame on you for stating Iran has nuclear weapons! Do you have proof? They use uranium for power and have to refine it for that. Your using misinformation to scare the American people. Are you Illuminati? I hope so because your helping to implement their plans. They planed this worldwide economic crises more than a decade ago and in their future plans manifest, 80-90% of us will be killed, ie, people you love that are not Illuminati will be starving.
Good going! Listen to Infowars.com and vote for Ron Paul.
Vicki
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Nice try with your false flag attack.
Nobody that supports Ron Paul or listens to Alex Jones is this stupid.
If America falls, it will be due to the sheer stupidity of it’s population – as evidenced above.
I have it on my decoder ring that mocoohayaivikciv is a rare Persian word for “Twelfth Imam.” Allahu Ackboom!
I’m assuming this was in reaction to something she heard on some radio show, as I don’t remember ever writing about Iran’s nuclear weapon programs (other than the Stuxnet worm). Nobody believes they have a nuclear weapon today or the ability to deliver it by a missile…
Nuclear fuel enrichment is the process of separating out the fissionable uranium-235 from the non-fissionable uranium-238. Natural uranium has 0.72% U-235. Older commercial power generation fuel is 3-5% U235 – bigger modern power plants use about 1% fuel – just barely enriched. If Iran is enriching the fuel beyond 5% (and using centrifuges is a really crude way to do that), they are doing so with intentions other than generating electricity.
Iran *is* enriching uranium-235 to 20% for its research reactor, which is not a power plant – it is used to create radioactive isotopes for other uses like creating materials used for medical tests. France has offered to provide Iran with the quantities of 20% U235 for that reactor – Iran doesn’t need to do its own enrichment for that purpose.
http://iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-54.pdf
“While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, as Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol, the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
All uranium based fission reactors convert some of the U238 to plutonium as a by-product. Plutonium IS a very potent fuel for a nuclear weapon – that’s how Pakistan is producing its nuclear weapons – but in order to do that, you have to know how to split out plutonium from the spent fuel rods.
To build a potent nuclear weapon from Uranium only that you could deliver on a missile, it has to be enriched up to > 90% U235.
Looking at the pattern of secrecy of Iran and hiding things from IAEA, it’s pretty clear they would like to create a nuclear weapon some day. However, I do agree that some factions in the U.S. government and other governments are probably exaggerating the probability and timing of Iran being able to do that – as a pretext for launching a preemptive attack on Iran.
Iranian nuclear research/development facilities: Fordo, Bonab, Ramsar, Arak (3), Qom, Natanz, Isfahan (2), Saghand, Yazd, Bushehr, Gachin, (Source: New Scientist Global Security); additionally, Tabriz, Rasht (2), Semnan, Tehran (10), Borujerd, Ahvaz, Shiraz, Bandar-e Abbas (3), Hamadan, Mashhad, (Source: NPR). And so on. I think it quacks … like a duck.