whaaaatt? no nuclear weapons? only a hole in the freaking mountain?

think of the trees wasted by the oceans of ink our newspapers have poured into this hole

(not to mention the oceans of hot air)

The basic problem for the IAEA is that the I stands for International and not for “Imerican”. The Obama administration will continue to wipe its **** with IAEA reports and can do so with impunity because almost every American is totally ignorant about the role and powers of the IAEA.

Thanks for the simple discription of the enrichment process, Samson.  You have to read the commenteers to get the important truths about politiical reality.

However it is a welcome change that truthdig has interupted its normal pro-war pro-zionist backing for war with Iran to print a piece that supports negotiations.  Conceivably it could continue.

Here’s an example of some total nonsense down in the Reuters article.

“Western diplomats and analysts say the site’s capacity appears too small to fuel a nuclear power station but enough to yield fissile material for one or two nuclear warheads a year.”

That’s silly.  A nuclear power plant uses uranium ‘enriched’ to 5%.  A nuclear warhead wants uranium that’s as ‘fully enriched’ as possible.  100% would be perfect.  High 90’s is good enough.

Now, understand what enrichment is.  Uranium comes out of the ground as a mix of two types of atoms called U-235 and U-238.  Its the U-235 that is ‘fissionable’, and when it comes out of the ground, uranium is about 0.7% U-235, and 99.3% U-238.

Enrichment is the raising of the percent of U-235 in a sample.  But, you don’t do this by magically making more U-235. You do it by separating away the U-238 you don’t want. 

This is where the centrifuges come in.  U-235 and U-238 are identical chemically, but differ by the weight of three tiny sub-atomic particles known as neutrons.  When you spin it around in a centrifuge, these very slightly heavier particles end up at one end and can be separated.  By removing the U-238, you create an ‘enriched’ uranium that has a higher percent of U-235 atoms in it.

Here’s the funny part.  If you’ve followed what’s above, you can tell that if you want to create a nuclear bomb, you need to start with about 150 times more uranium than you need.  And, since each pass through a centrifuge only separates a little U-238 due to the two atoms only having the difference in weight of three tiny subatomic particles, it takes run after run after run to get to the higher enrichments you’d want.

To get to 5%, you only need about 5 times as much Uranium as you need, and you can stop making the runs through the centrifuges when you get to 5% instead of continuing up to 90%.

To get to 1 gram of 100% fully enriched uranium, you’d need to start with 142 grams (using 0.7% as the raw material).  To get to 1 gram of 5% enriched uranium, you’d need to start with a bit over 7 grams.

Can you imagine a facility that can run 142 grams of material through a process over and over until it reaches 95% purity, but it can’t run 7 grams of the same material through the same process the much fewer times it would take to reach 5% purity?

Given all of that, it sounds laughably funny that someone would say a facility is incapable of making nuclear power reactor fuel at 5% enrichment, but can crank out enough 95% enriched material to build two bombs.

This statement by ‘western diplomats and analysts’ starts to get to be ridiculously funny when you know what’s really going on.

Notice of course that the statement is unsourced.  After all, anyone who actually knows anything about this isn’t about to put their name on something so stupid and wrong.  Always be very wary of any unsourced statements from ‘western officials; or the like.  Its almost always propaganda.

But also notice how the statement very nicely fits a bs propaganda campaign designed to make people who can’t know better believe that Iran is doing something that can only lead to nuclear weapons and not peaceful nuclear power.  That’s obviously why this particular piece of bull was invented.

Back in my misguided youth, I obtained a degree in nuclear engineering.  As someone with that background, I can tell anyone who will listen that pretty much everything I’ve ever heard about nuclear weapons and Iraq and Iran has been such a ridiculous load of bull that it is laughably funny at times.

Basically, if you hear any US politician or any US corporate media source talking to you about Iran and nuclear weapons, the only safe way to react is to assume that they are completely lying.  Don’t pay any attention, as its all bull.

If you are reading this, then you are in the minority that knows what the latest IAEA report says.  It also means that as you listen to American politicians and media, that you’ll see that they’ll ignore this report, just like they’ve ignored every other inconvenient fact or truth that points to the basic fact that the same people who lied to you about WMD’s in Iraq are also lying to you about WMD’s in Iran.

The basket weavers are starting to make the US and Israel look like basket cases.

The clean assessment, which described the site as a “hole in a mountain,” may cause critics to now look for more diplomatic solutions to Iran’s nucpphhahahaha, ahahaha, hahahahaha, sorry, sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face. Iran “critics” looking for diplomatic solutions, that’s a good one.

‘The clean assessment, which described the site as a “hole in a mountain,” may cause critics to now look for more diplomatic solutions to Iran’s nucpphhahahaha, ahahaha, hahahahaha, sorry, sorry I couldn’t keep a straight face.’

Well well… Iran’s infamous secret nuclear site has turned out to be no more than a “hole in a mountain”, per the CHIEF of the IAEA.  But who are you going to believe, the people that traveled to the site to form their own opinions, or the Western media?  This will most likely be allowed to sneak through the cracks unnoticed, or spun to make Iran look more dangerous.