http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070409-121433-7940r.htm - Iran begins 'dramatic' nuclear expansion

I think it had something to do with the April 6th US invasion of Iran.

Well, one Russian newsguy was reporting the April 6th date.  I guess the invasion's been delayed.  Good thing, too.

What does the Iranian government want to achieve?

If all they want is to develop nuclear weapons they would have done it in secret like the Chinese, Indian and  Pakistanis.

>>> What does the Iranian government want to achieve?

Leverage against the US.  "You bomb us, we'll nuke something."

"What does the Iranian government want to achieve?"

Now that we have taken down saddam, they are the superpower of the middle east. This is the obvious path of a superpower.

AND, Iran's oil supplies are thought by some to be dwindling... gone in 10-15 years.

The Washington Times is run by the moonies. Expect barking points so far to the right that Goldwater appears as a sympathetic liberal.

This guy: http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
has a lot more intelligent information about just what those centrifuges are, what they do, and what does this "news" mean.

>All of this is to suggest that today’s announcement seems like a stunt.

>After all, a few thousand P1 centrifuges is nowhere near industrial scale. A 1,000 MW(e) reactor requires something like 100,000 SWU each year to keep it fueled. Aqazadeh mentioned plans for an indigenous 360 MW(e) electric reactor—assuming 36,000 SWU to keep it fueled, Iran would need 18,000 P1 centrifuges. Good luck with that.

>Well, Iran may have installed 1,000 centrifuges, but that doesn’t mean Iran can operate them.

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/IranUF6.pdf
claims they're running about 5 hours/day.

> If all they want is to develop nuclear weapons they would have done it in secret

Why should they have to? The same countries who want to invade you don't want you to have nuclear weapons. Wouldn't you give them the big middle finger?

So they actually want to give them the finger, not develop the weapon?

That's great...

> not develop the weapon?

If you were Iran wouldn't you want to develop a weapon?

Yes.

And that's why they should do it in secret.

They don't need weapons-grade uranium.  All they need is enough radioactive "junk" to make a few dirty bombs.

Just as effective, only without the cute mushroom cloud.

All they need to do is sponsor some commercials on TV shows. Like 24, or something. I think Fox may have a spring sale on 'mushroom cloud' graphics they could use.

Building a nuclear weapon is very easy. High school science fair project level difficulty.

Building a nuclear weapon that is lightweight enough to be put on a missile and yet has enough yield to wreck extreme havoc is much more difficult.

Iran is going the route of North Korea - they'll test a bomb that has very poor yield, and then if they are smart, they'll give up.

If they start doing the sort of testing necessary to build the big yield nukes, then it's all more of a problem.

>The Washington Times is run by the moonies. Expect barking
>points so far to the right that Goldwater appears as a
>sympathetic liberal.

This is a news story syndicated from the AP, however.

And because it's SoP, she got it from John Robb :)

"High school science fair"?

That's why The Manhattan Project was so cheap, right?  That's why the Nazi's had it first, right?

You're dealing with pulling a little U238 out of a lot of U235.  To do this, you dissolve it into a gas, Uranium Hexaflouride.  It's radioactive, and deadly.

That's if you're going with a Uranium bomb.  I assume going with a Plutonium bomb is somewhat easier. 

And who does the shaped charges?  And who does the machining of radioactive metal?

Sheesh, and they call me "moron".

> Sheesh, and they call me "moron".

Those fembots can be hard to train properly.