

Iran is fueling up their first nuclear power plant - pjscott
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11045537

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pjscott
Some technical details: the plant is a Russian VVER-1000, a solid and
dependable design with a good safety record. It's a pressurized water reactor,
pretty similar to the plants in the US, and will produce 1 GW of electricity.

A fun thing about the VVER and similar reactors: they're great for providing a
steady chunk of power at a stable cost, but they _suck_ for making nuclear
weapons. For producing weapons-grade plutonium, by far the easiest way to go
is by making a specialized weapons-production reactor. Commercial power
reactors (with a few exceptions, like Chernobyl) just aren't set up for making
plutonium that could be used in a nuclear bomb. And because of the
international supply and operations chain for these power reactors, it's
extra-hard for the country operating them to use them nefariously.

It's counterintuitive, but the export of nuclear power plants may actually
_help_ with nuclear arms nonproliferation, by making any attempt to create
weapons-production reactors that much easier to spot. After all, why would a
small country try to make its own reactor designs when there are cheaper and
better designs available on the market already? It would stand out,
conspicuously.

~~~
hga
One problem here: to have it _operated_ by the locals requires a significant
training effort and then it's reinforced by doing it for real.

You're absolutely right about the lack of a direct proliferation problem and
the fact that so many people including inexcusably Jimmy Carter when he was
President (he was one of Rickover's nuclear engineers) make such a big deal of
this non-existent danger says a lot about modern world wide science policy,
all bad.

Weapons grade plutonium has to be be bred quickly so that the buildup of the
two undesired isotopes is minimized, which required quick fuel exchange,
something the RMBK designed used at Chernobyl allows. Taking standard civilian
grade plutonium based on the usual infrequent fueling cycles and trying to
make a bomb out of it requires refrigeration capable of removing 100kW of
waste heat (that's from the plutonium isotope used to power the RTGs used in
deep space probes) and results in something that's locomotive sized and that
has sub-kiloton yield (we did this as a proof of concept in the late '70s and
Jimmy freaked).

That said, while Iran's incompetence at maintaining and expanding their
electrical infrastructure means they really do need the power, what's to say
they don't use it as an inefficient weapons grade plutonium breeder? It does
indeed suck for this purpose, but will they care???

(I suspect they will because the subsequent separation process is so difficult
to run in practice (due to how fiercely radioactive what's pulled out of a
reactor is) and they're forging ahead on the uranium approach.)

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ippisl
How easy it is to convert the reactor itself , into one that can make weapons
grade plutonium? i read somewhere it takes 3 months, is this true.

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LostInTheWoods2
Is there any doubt remaining that the goal of the Iranian government is to
build a nuclear bomb? Is there any doubt that they will use it? Either
directly or through a proxy?

~~~
pjscott
Sure there's doubt. They could just be using this as geopolitical maneuvering,
plus internal propaganda. Having a credible nuclear program makes Iran's
bargaining position much stronger.

As for using it, _why_ would Iran use it? What would they gain from such a
thing? One nuclear missile is enough to kill a lot of people, and of course
every death is a horrible tragedy, but it's not enough to really seriously
hurt another _country._ Hell, it takes several nuclear missiles just to
properly destroy a rail yard.

Iran is being watched carefully enough that, if they used a nuclear bomb
(either directly or through a proxy), it would be traced back to them, and the
consequences would be dire. Nuclear bombs are far more useful to Iran as
bargaining chips than as weapons.

~~~
hga
" _it's not enough to really seriously hurt another_ country"

Are you _really_ serious? Have you looked at a map to see how small Israel is?
What about the problem that most countries are "one nuclear bomb" size, in
that _everything_ having to do with their ruling class is concentrated in one
massive city? Which I grant would normally take much more than one fission
bomb to destroy, but if the placement and wind directions are good, a lot will
be uninhabitable for a while?

London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Seoul (I think), there's lots more. Notably the
US and Germany aren't in this category (or so I think for the latter, which is
an artifact of the end of WWII).

Israel's big cities aren't, _can't_ be that big nor are their very many of
them (more than two that really count???).

There's also the EMP gambit which might be used against us.

As for rail yards, again, are you really serious? They're fantastically harder
than civilian buildings.

