*Puts head through monitor* - The Stupidity BUUUUUUUURNS

[Darth Wong]

Again, you don't get it. It's not about Iranian honesty; it's about exposing their dishonesty when they refuse to destroy their centrifuges even after being offered pre-processed reactor-grade uranium.

And giving them the enriched U328 significantly speeds up their timetable
to obtaining an operational device and joining the Nuclear Club. Upon
which we can't do jack fucking shit about them.

Do you have a reading comprehension problem? The idea is to offer them the fuel in exchange for them destroying their centrifuges first, not to just hand it over to them and expect them to destroy their centrifuges someday. And the point is that they won't agree to it anyway, hence it will prove that they're lying about using the centrifuges for peaceful purposes.

[MKSheppard]

And if they destroy some of their centrifuges, claiming that those are all of them?

Just look at the farce Saddam led us through for twelve long
torturous years; now imagine trying to enforce sanctions on
an openly nuclear Iran with an operational device.

[Darth Wong]

And if they destroy some of their centrifuges, claiming that those are all of them?

Just look at the farce Saddam led us through for twelve long torturous years; now imagine trying to enforce sanctions on an openly nuclear Iran with an operational device.

So what's your solution, then? And don't say "nuke 'em"; you know perfectly well that it's not a realistic solution.

PS. If they have the equipment, it doesn't matter whether they get partially enriched uranium; they can eventually get a nuke either way.

[MKSheppard]

Do you have a reading comprehension problem? The idea is to offer them the fuel in exchange for them destroying their centrifuges first, not to just hand it over to them and expect them to destroy their centrifuges someday.

How do we know they've destroyed ALL of their centrifuges then, or burned the plans to them?

[aerius]

Again, you don't get it. It's not about Iranian honesty; it's about exposing their dishonesty when they refuse to destroy their centrifuges even after being offered pre-processed reactor-grade uranium.

Then what? Ok, now everyone in the world knows that their nuclear power program is BS and they're actually making bombs, what next? Negotiate? Invade? Nuke'em till they glow? Talk to the UN? And in the meantime we've just given them a freebie and a leg up on their nuke weapons development.

[MKSheppard]

PS. If they have the equipment, it doesn't matter whether they get partially enriched uranium; they can eventually get a nuke either way.

It shortens their timetable if they can get partially enriched uranium.
Quite frankly, I want to push the possiblity of a nuclear armed Iranian
fundamentalist state ruled by the Ayatollahs as far off into the future
as I can, rather than speed it up.

[Darth Wong]

You obviously don't get it; reactor-grade uranium (at least, in a reactor system that wasn't designed foolishly) is nowhere near what you need in order to make a bomb. It's a joke to say that it would actually help someone along on a nuclear weapons program. The real key is the enrichment equipment. Now, you can argue that they can just hide that; well, they can do that regardless of whether someone tries this idea, and it won't matter worth a damn either way.

Do you have any idea how much more enriched weapons-grade uranium has to be, compared to reactor-grade uranium? Hell, CANDU reactor-grade uranium is actually no different than natural uranium except that it's cleaned up and refined.

[MKSheppard]

So what's your solution, then? And don't say "nuke 'em"; you know perfectly well that it's not a realistic solution.

Attack them with conventional munitions before they can bring more devices on-line, immediately after their test shot, before they can
bring enough devices on-line to make attacking them practically
infeasible.

[Darth Wong]

So what's your solution, then? And don't say "nuke 'em"; you know perfectly well that it's not a realistic solution.

Attack them with conventional munitions before they can bring more devices on-line, immediately after their test shot, before they can bring enough devices on-line to make attacking them practically infeasible.

So you're saying "wait until they verifiably make a nuke and then bomb the facility?" This is your solution?

[MKSheppard]

You obviously don't get it; reactor-grade uranium (at least, in a reactor system that wasn't designed foolishly) is nowhere near what you need in order to make a bomb.

Oak Ridge Disagrees

In 1977 Oak Ridge National Laboratory published a report outlining a conceptual design for a "simple and quick" plant for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.(3) The GAO was asked to evaluate the Oak Ridge report's credibility and policy implications.

GAO reached three conclusions about that report:

1. The Oak Ridge estimate of 4 to 6 months for constructing a small reprocessing facility, although not highly probable, should be considered credible in some circumstances.

2. The possibility of quick construction of secret reprocessing plants is not a significant factor in deciding whether to allow reprocessing of spent fuel.

3. The memorandum serves to reemphasize the importance of US initiatives to improve controls on spent nuclear fuel.

Relevant comments from the GAO analysis are as follows:

Without concern for the problems of safety handling radioactive materials a small reprocessing plant could be built in 4 to 6 months. The first 10 kilograms of plutonium could be recovered about a week after initial operation, and about 5 kilograms of plutonium per day thereafter. When other requirements such as the time to design the plant, recruit and train designers and operators, find a suitable site and stockpile critical equipment are considered the time to plant completion increases anywhere from 19 to 30 months. Of significant interest is that no reviewer of the Oak Ridge report said "that the construction and operation of a small reprocessing plant by a nonnuclear-weapons nation was not technically feasible". In fact most agreed that a small plant could be built without difficulty but would require trained operators.

Iran possesses the knowledge and capability to build a small reprocessing facility on its own.

[MKSheppard]

So you're saying "wait until they verifiably make a nuke and then bomb the facility?" This is your solution?

Hey, it beats pulling another Iraq.

[aerius]

Attack them with conventional munitions before they can bring more devices on-line, immediately after their test shot, before they can
bring enough devices on-line to make attacking them practically
infeasible.

Shep Shep Shep, you have to be more proactive. Launch a pre-emptive spec-ops attack against their facilities and do hits on their nuclear weapons development teams.

[MKSheppard]

Shep Shep Shep, you have to be more proactive. Launch a pre-emptive spec-ops attack against their facilities and do hits on their nuclear weapons development teams.

Nah. Not proactive enough.

*pulls out piecutter*

[Darth Wong]

Oak Ridge Disagrees

So if they have the necessary technology to process and refine the fuel and they can design the weapons (which is all anyone would ever need), they can eventually have a nuke? Well knock me over with a feather, I'm shocked! How does that change anything, then?

[MKSheppard]

How does that change anything, then?

Do you really want Iran, the land of the mad ayatollahs, to get
their grubby hands on the Bomb faster? If this was Brazil, Portugal,
or Germany, I wouldn't give a damn about us giving them reactor
grade fuel as they can be trusted, but IRAN?

[aerius]

Ideally you want to make sure Iran never gets a working nuke, but that's probably impossible without nuking, invading, or bombing them back to the stone age. However Iran is slowly reforming, and the longer we can keep the bomb out of their hands the better. If they got it in the next year or 2, we'd be in deep shit, if we can put it off 10-20 years the country will probably be more sane than it is now, and at the very least we'll have better anti-missile technology if shit goes wrong.

[Lord Poe]

The idea is to offer them the fuel in exchange for them destroying their centrifuges first, not to just hand it over to them and expect them to destroy their centrifuges someday. And the point is that they won't agree to it anyway, hence it will prove that they're lying about using the centrifuges for peaceful purposes.

This is cute, but we all know the answer to this one. These are the same prehistoric people who hang little girls, isn't it?

[aerius]

Nah. Not proactive enough.

*pulls out piecutter*

Yes, but that leaves the slight problem of deniability and international repurcussions. Everyone would know the US nuked them which would likely lead to a ton of bitching, boycotts, and trade sanctions, and it's quite possible that a lot of the US overseas factories and industries would get trashed and/or booted out. Countries may refuse to do trade with the US and there'd be huge short-term shortages of electronic goods & parts such as memory chips, hard-drives, TVs, cameras, DVD players, and those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.

With a spec-ops strike, the US has deniability, and they can pin the blame on Israel since they have a history of blowing up nuke plants, or at worst they can condemn the guys and write it off as a rogue operation. Not that anyone will truly believe it, they'll still bitch and cry but they can't really do anything except throw an ambassador out, and Iran still gets its nuke program knocked back 10-20 years. Rinse, and repeat as needed.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I dont know, a lot of the stigma about nuclear power might disappear if people didnt associate nuclear power with nukes, so this might be good actually. It might erase some of the anti-nuclear stigma and allow people to finally get past Hiroshima and Three Mile Island. Not instantly, of course, but a man can dream.

Or it might be the first step in getting rid of nukes altogether.

These ultragreen people hate and fear nuclear power. I doubt they'll rest as long as a single reactor remains running.

[Sea Skimmer]

With a spec-ops strike, the US has deniability

No it doesn't, any special operations attack with the power to accomplish the mission will be amount the least deniable attack ever because it will involve hundreds of soldiers covered in American equipment inserted by aircraft, which have no foreign equivalents, running around yelling in English for hours on end while a rain of bombs and missiles stamped made in American dropped by planes Iranian radar easily tracked flying out of American airbases pour down into Iranian airbases and garrisons. Anything less involving ground troops and you make it even less deniable because of the huge pile of dead bodies the fuckup will leave behind.

[RedImperator]

AAAAAAAAARGH!

Great way to turn the US Stockpile into worthless pieces of shit as the plutonium and uranium decays! Eventually you're going to have to replace the shit with newly manufactured stuff, the stuff doesn't last forever!

I think that's the idea, Shep. Gradual nuclear disarmament.

A pipe dream. That genie's been out of the bottle for almost sixty years now. Kerry's half-assed plan would actually make a nuclear war more likely--as the US and other arsenals shrank due to declining stocks of weapons grade uranium and plutonium, everyone would be forced into a first-strike posture to prevent losing their entire strategic deterrent in a sneak attack. And the fact of the matter is, even if all the declared nuclear powers were totally, 100% sincere in their desire to follow through with this plan, there's no way for any individual power to be certain the other six (not to mention Israel and North Korea) are doing the same. This is shitty, half-baked Kennedy foreign policy, and quite honestly, if he's serious about this, I would be sorely tempted to vote Bush.

Not that it would ever actually happen. I can't imagine France voting to disarm itself, and France has a veto. Nor China, nor Russia. Britain is the only other SC member I could see possibly voting yes if we did. It's not so much that I'm worried about this passing (and I don't think Kerry is insane enough to unilaterally disarm) than I am concerned about what kind of military policy John Kerry plans to have if he's making campaign promises like thiso ne.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not that it would ever actually happen. I can't imagine France voting to disarm itself, and France has a veto. Nor China, nor Russia. Britain is the only other SC member I could see possibly voting yes if we did. It's not so much that I'm worried about this passing (and I don't think Kerry is insane enough to unilaterally disarm) than I am concerned about what kind of military policy John Kerry plans to have if he's making campaign promises like thiso ne.

I highly doubt the British would do that, they seem quite happy to have nuclear weapons on the table. For example while US work on new small tactical nuclear weapons has remained paper only, the British have now have each SSBN that deploys carry several missiles armed only with a single low yield 10kt warhead for use as a 'demonstration of resolve' or tactical work.

[LordShaithis]

Does anyone else get the feeling that we're pissing into the wind, and eventually ANY shithole country is going to be able to build nukes? There's a lot of uranium in the world, and sooner or later pretty much everyone is going to at least be where we were fifty years ago, technologically.

[Crayz9000]

You know, there's this great quote that came to mind while reading the thread:

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers."

See, there's this thing called an unpredictability factor... the Islamic world has had a habit of being predictably unpredictable for the past, oh, how many years now?

[Durandal]

How does that change anything, then?

Do you really want Iran, the land of the mad ayatollahs, to get their grubby hands on the Bomb faster? If this was Brazil, Portugal, or Germany, I wouldn't give a damn about us giving them reactor grade fuel as they can be trusted, but IRAN?

Well look at this. You're on like a broken record in yet another thread, completely ignoring the other side's points. You must be on the lower extreme of your contribution cycle, which resembles a sine wave with its peak just barely above the x-axis.

Reactor-grade uranium and weapons-grade uranium are two completely different animals. Obtaining reactor-grade uranium doesn't help a nuclear weapons program. Did you not read that part? You like to bitch and moan about liberals stupidly stifling the idea of a nuclear power plant by equating it with a ticking atomic bomb, but obviously you don't grasp the difference between a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb either.