>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Comment: It is just me for does this seem real eerie of pre-invasion of Iraq times?!? Beware! Beware!
Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Come Together! Join Up! Seize the Time!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://humane-rights-agenda-network.ning.com/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG" <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:02:08 PM
Subject: Experts Weigh In on Obama's Explanation of Iran's Nuclear Facility
Experts Weigh In on Obama's Explanation of Iran's Nuclear Facility
Nuclear Analysts Say Obama's 'Size and Configuration'
Explanation May Not be So Straight Forward
By SPENCER ACKERMAN
9/28/09 6:00 AM
http://washingtonindependent.com/61063/experts-weigh-in-on-significance-of-irans-nuclear-facility
Flanked by the French president and the British
premier, President Obama on Friday dramatically stated
that the "size and configuration" of a previously
undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the clerical
city of Qom make it "inconsistent with a peaceful
program." Several independent experts believe the
facility is most likely being constructed to support a
nuclear weapons program, especially as Iran's
concealment of it comes after years of nondisclosure
and obstruction of inspections. But even those experts
believe that the "size and configuration" of the
facility does not necessarily mean it could only be
used to build an atomic bomb.
The facility in Qom, which is not yet completed, is
significantly smaller than the enrichment facility at
Natanz that has concerned the International Atomic
Energy Agency since 2003. Natanz contains 50,000
centrifuges, compared to the 3,000 the administration
believes to be at Qom. All that raises questions about
the basic economic logic of constructing such a small
facility to produce peaceful nuclear power.
"If you have 50,000 [-centrifuge] facility, you don't
go to all the expense build a new facility to increase
capacity by 6 percent," said James Acton, a nuclear
researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. "None of this makes sense for an economic
standpoint. What it does make sense for is a weapons
standpoint."
Yet that reasoning is inferential, not explicitly
concluded from the "size and configuration" of the Qom
facility. "It's kind of hard to draw clear red lines
about [centrifuge] numbers," Acton cautioned. "Any
facility is capable of producing any amount of uranium
of any enrichment if it has time to do so."
Added Ivanka Barzashka, a nuclear analyst with the
Federation of American Scientists, "The size of a
facility does not determine whether it can or cannot
produce weapons-grade, or highly-enriched, uranium.
Both enrichment to a low degree for a nuclear reactor
and to a high degree for a nuclear weapon is done by
gas centrifuges. In both cases, these are exactly the
same machines." The issue for Barzashka, like Acton, is
that "certain things make economic sense and others
don't," and building a 3,000-centrifuge facility to
enrich uranium for nuclear power would most likely take
" about 90 years to get one years fuel load. This of
course makes no sense."
David Albright, the president of the Institute for
Science and International Security, said he was
confused by Obama's statement. "Size doesn't tell me
anything," said Albright, whose organization posted
satellite photographs of the facility's exterior on
Friday. "There's no real hard and fast threshold" based
on number of centrifuges that distinguishes a nuclear-
weapons facility from a nuclear-energy facility. While
one possibility for Qom is the production of a smaller
facility for conducting nuclear research, Albright,
like Acton, said that "I personally believe this is for
a nuclear-weapons capability."
Uranium used for a nuclear weapon must be enriched to a
high potency, over 90 percent, through the use of
centrifuges to separate out the fissionable isotopes.
Centrifuges are arranged together in so-called cascades
to achieve greater potency in less time. At the United
Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said that Iran is interested in enriching
uranium to about 20 percent, which could provide for
nuclear energy but is far short of weapons-grade
enrichment. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS's "Face The
Nation" that Iran "can't say anything" to satisfy
international concerns about Iran's nuclear program
after years of Iranian concealment and deception, but
instead must "open up the entire system to extensive
investigation" by the IAEA.
"If you wanted a facility to make enough low-enriched
uranium for a power reactor you need a site like
Natanz," Albright continued, since fueling a nuclear-
power reactor requires a large amount of enrichment.
"You need about 50,000 centrifuges. But if you want
[enriched uranium] for a bomb," Albright said, then
"3,000 is plenty. Two thousand would be enough. But you
can't reverse it and say if it's small it can't be used
for civilian purposes."
The small number of centrifuges at the facility,
though, raises questions about how efficiently the
Iranians could produce enough enriched uranium at Qom
for a big nuclear reactor to generate power, as the
Iranians claim. Using the types of centrifuges the
Iranians use, known as P-1s, with 3,000 of them, would
"take years to produce enough material for even one
reactor load," said Joseph Cirincione, the president of
the Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofileration organization.
But in "one year," he said, a 3,000-centrifuge facility
could conceivably "enrich enough uranium for one crude
nuclear weapon." According to calculations by nuclear
expert Andreas Persbo posted to the blog
ArmsControlWonk, the facility could produce about 40
kilograms worth of high-enriched uranium in that time,
enough for about one and a half bombs.
A negotiation in Geneva scheduled for October 1 will be
the venue for Iran to disclose additional information
about its nuclear program to a consortium of nations -
the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, China and
Russia - informally known as the P5+1. The leaders have
insisted over the last several days that the IAEA will
be given full access to the Qom facility to better
determine its capabilities.
Albright said the configuration of the centrifuges at
Qom would help the IAEA reach some conclusions. "If
it's a pilot [research and development] program, then,
for example, you'd see a hodgepodge of 164
[centrifuges] running in cascade," he said, and the
fewer of those cascades at the facility would indicate
that the program is aimed at "getting them to work
properly," rather than producing "a certain level of
enriched uranium in large quantities." Albright added
that he saw no evidence that the U.S. intelligence
community had knowledge of the configuration of the
cascades at the Qom facility.
Similarly, Albright was unable to learn what Obama
meant by "configuration" of the facility when he
approached his contacts in the administration this
weekend. "We tried to figure it out, but didn't get a
satisfactory answer," he said. "Maybe [Obama] knows
something that some of us don't know. We would assume
he means the arrangements of these cascades," but it is
unclear.
Before leaving Pittsburgh, President Obama acknowledged
the U.S.'s credibility problem when citing secret
intelligence to accuse an adversary of a secret weapons
program in the wake of the Iraq war. Obama said the
intelligence undergirding his statements was the "work
product of three intelligence agencies" from the United
States, U.K. and France, all of which "checked over
this work in a painstaking fashion, precisely because
we didn't want any ambiguity."
Barzashka, Albright, Acton and Cirincione all agreed
that the concealment of the Qom facility raised serious
questions about Iranian nuclear intentions. They agreed
that the small number of centrifuges apparently at Qom
indeed casts doubt on the facility's utility for
civilian nuclear power. Albright added the fact that
the facility is built deep into a mountain, where a
potential U.S. or Israeli airstrike would be hard-
pressed to destroy it, further feeds the inference that
the plant is for a military program.
Albright said it was important to examine
administration statements based on secret evidence,
even as the preponderance of the evidence supports
Obama's case. "Intelligence information is used to
increase [international pressure] for sanctions and lay
a path for possible military action," Albright said,
"so that information has to be publicly scrutinized
carefully."
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
From: "moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG" <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:02:08 PM
Subject: Experts Weigh In on Obama's Explanation of Iran's Nuclear Facility
Experts Weigh In on Obama's Explanation of Iran's Nuclear Facility
Nuclear Analysts Say Obama's 'Size and Configuration'
Explanation May Not be So Straight Forward
By SPENCER ACKERMAN
9/28/09 6:00 AM
http://washingtonindependent.com/61063/experts-weigh-in-on-significance-of-irans-nuclear-facility
Flanked by the French president and the British
premier, President Obama on Friday dramatically stated
that the "size and configuration" of a previously
undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the clerical
city of Qom make it "inconsistent with a peaceful
program." Several independent experts believe the
facility is most likely being constructed to support a
nuclear weapons program, especially as Iran's
concealment of it comes after years of nondisclosure
and obstruction of inspections. But even those experts
believe that the "size and configuration" of the
facility does not necessarily mean it could only be
used to build an atomic bomb.
The facility in Qom, which is not yet completed, is
significantly smaller than the enrichment facility at
Natanz that has concerned the International Atomic
Energy Agency since 2003. Natanz contains 50,000
centrifuges, compared to the 3,000 the administration
believes to be at Qom. All that raises questions about
the basic economic logic of constructing such a small
facility to produce peaceful nuclear power.
"If you have 50,000 [-centrifuge] facility, you don't
go to all the expense build a new facility to increase
capacity by 6 percent," said James Acton, a nuclear
researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. "None of this makes sense for an economic
standpoint. What it does make sense for is a weapons
standpoint."
Yet that reasoning is inferential, not explicitly
concluded from the "size and configuration" of the Qom
facility. "It's kind of hard to draw clear red lines
about [centrifuge] numbers," Acton cautioned. "Any
facility is capable of producing any amount of uranium
of any enrichment if it has time to do so."
Added Ivanka Barzashka, a nuclear analyst with the
Federation of American Scientists, "The size of a
facility does not determine whether it can or cannot
produce weapons-grade, or highly-enriched, uranium.
Both enrichment to a low degree for a nuclear reactor
and to a high degree for a nuclear weapon is done by
gas centrifuges. In both cases, these are exactly the
same machines." The issue for Barzashka, like Acton, is
that "certain things make economic sense and others
don't," and building a 3,000-centrifuge facility to
enrich uranium for nuclear power would most likely take
" about 90 years to get one years fuel load. This of
course makes no sense."
David Albright, the president of the Institute for
Science and International Security, said he was
confused by Obama's statement. "Size doesn't tell me
anything," said Albright, whose organization posted
satellite photographs of the facility's exterior on
Friday. "There's no real hard and fast threshold" based
on number of centrifuges that distinguishes a nuclear-
weapons facility from a nuclear-energy facility. While
one possibility for Qom is the production of a smaller
facility for conducting nuclear research, Albright,
like Acton, said that "I personally believe this is for
a nuclear-weapons capability."
Uranium used for a nuclear weapon must be enriched to a
high potency, over 90 percent, through the use of
centrifuges to separate out the fissionable isotopes.
Centrifuges are arranged together in so-called cascades
to achieve greater potency in less time. At the United
Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said that Iran is interested in enriching
uranium to about 20 percent, which could provide for
nuclear energy but is far short of weapons-grade
enrichment. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS's "Face The
Nation" that Iran "can't say anything" to satisfy
international concerns about Iran's nuclear program
after years of Iranian concealment and deception, but
instead must "open up the entire system to extensive
investigation" by the IAEA.
"If you wanted a facility to make enough low-enriched
uranium for a power reactor you need a site like
Natanz," Albright continued, since fueling a nuclear-
power reactor requires a large amount of enrichment.
"You need about 50,000 centrifuges. But if you want
[enriched uranium] for a bomb," Albright said, then
"3,000 is plenty. Two thousand would be enough. But you
can't reverse it and say if it's small it can't be used
for civilian purposes."
The small number of centrifuges at the facility,
though, raises questions about how efficiently the
Iranians could produce enough enriched uranium at Qom
for a big nuclear reactor to generate power, as the
Iranians claim. Using the types of centrifuges the
Iranians use, known as P-1s, with 3,000 of them, would
"take years to produce enough material for even one
reactor load," said Joseph Cirincione, the president of
the Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofileration organization.
But in "one year," he said, a 3,000-centrifuge facility
could conceivably "enrich enough uranium for one crude
nuclear weapon." According to calculations by nuclear
expert Andreas Persbo posted to the blog
ArmsControlWonk, the facility could produce about 40
kilograms worth of high-enriched uranium in that time,
enough for about one and a half bombs.
A negotiation in Geneva scheduled for October 1 will be
the venue for Iran to disclose additional information
about its nuclear program to a consortium of nations -
the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, China and
Russia - informally known as the P5+1. The leaders have
insisted over the last several days that the IAEA will
be given full access to the Qom facility to better
determine its capabilities.
Albright said the configuration of the centrifuges at
Qom would help the IAEA reach some conclusions. "If
it's a pilot [research and development] program, then,
for example, you'd see a hodgepodge of 164
[centrifuges] running in cascade," he said, and the
fewer of those cascades at the facility would indicate
that the program is aimed at "getting them to work
properly," rather than producing "a certain level of
enriched uranium in large quantities." Albright added
that he saw no evidence that the U.S. intelligence
community had knowledge of the configuration of the
cascades at the Qom facility.
Similarly, Albright was unable to learn what Obama
meant by "configuration" of the facility when he
approached his contacts in the administration this
weekend. "We tried to figure it out, but didn't get a
satisfactory answer," he said. "Maybe [Obama] knows
something that some of us don't know. We would assume
he means the arrangements of these cascades," but it is
unclear.
Before leaving Pittsburgh, President Obama acknowledged
the U.S.'s credibility problem when citing secret
intelligence to accuse an adversary of a secret weapons
program in the wake of the Iraq war. Obama said the
intelligence undergirding his statements was the "work
product of three intelligence agencies" from the United
States, U.K. and France, all of which "checked over
this work in a painstaking fashion, precisely because
we didn't want any ambiguity."
Barzashka, Albright, Acton and Cirincione all agreed
that the concealment of the Qom facility raised serious
questions about Iranian nuclear intentions. They agreed
that the small number of centrifuges apparently at Qom
indeed casts doubt on the facility's utility for
civilian nuclear power. Albright added the fact that
the facility is built deep into a mountain, where a
potential U.S. or Israeli airstrike would be hard-
pressed to destroy it, further feeds the inference that
the plant is for a military program.
Albright said it was important to examine
administration statements based on secret evidence,
even as the preponderance of the evidence supports
Obama's case. "Intelligence information is used to
increase [international pressure] for sanctions and lay
a path for possible military action," Albright said,
"so that information has to be publicly scrutinized
carefully."
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
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