tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post1427000211296697163..comments2023-11-03T06:36:27.305-04:00Comments on Phronesisaical: Parsing the Iran Newshelmuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-78520054479530607522010-02-15T22:50:12.020-05:002010-02-15T22:50:12.020-05:00FYI,
The US, France and Russia have all denied ma...FYI,<br /><br />The <a href="http://uskowioniran.blogspot.com/2010/02/us-russia-and-france-deny-irans-claim.html" rel="nofollow">US, France and Russia have all denied</a> making any new offers to Iran.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-24627162516963285132010-02-15T15:11:57.321-05:002010-02-15T15:11:57.321-05:00Helmut asked me something similar in an e-mail thi...Helmut asked me something similar in an e-mail this morning, so I guess it's time.<br /><br />There seems to be no single "rule" as to how long a country needs to develop nuclear weapons. The United States developed uranium enrichment and plutonium production technology, along with two successful bomb designs in something like 26 months, and that was from scratch. Of course, it was an all-out war effort and billions of dollars were spent on it.<br /><br />Conversely, North Korea has had quite a bit of time and not much money to come up with two bomb designs that would give ugly results in a city but are not successful by nuclear weapons design standards.<br /><br />The prediction for how long it will take Iran to get a bomb has been in the range of 3 to 5 years for the past couple of decades. Without doing any calculations, my guess is that that's still good. And they'd have to kick the IAEA inspectors out first, unless they've got a secret installation we don't know about.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2628/consensus-emerges-on-irans-ir-1" rel="nofollow">Arms Control Wonk</a> has an estimate of the separative work capacity of Iran's centrifuges. That isn't too helpful, though, without some calculation of how many SWUs (separative work units) are needed for the various enrichments.<br /><br />I'll try to get some numbers and links together in a post.Cheryl Roferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11082102629165547210noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-90666433820766354232010-02-15T14:36:08.924-05:002010-02-15T14:36:08.924-05:00Could you remind us what percentages reflect what ...Could you remind us what percentages reflect what sort of critical threshold for enrichment, if any, and what sort of time trajectories we should have in mind? Rules of thumb for Iran or for in-general? Is it ridiculous to compare the time-frame of the Manhattan Project, which I guess we all know by the end must have been able to produce a sufficiently enriched (%?) critical mass in the space of a year or so? I guess you've told us it comes down to a throughput capacity that even spy agencies are only guessing at. I could use a reminder though of what we can reasonably assume.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.com