Barbra Boxer on The Ed Show just said...

[Motown_Johnny]

...that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make 10 nuclear bombs.


Did I hear that right?

That can't be right.. can it?

[randys1]

1. Yes and under the deal they will have most of that taken from them or controlled.

[BeyondGeography]

2. She's just repeating what Obama said this morning

Under the terms of the deal, they won't have enough to make a single bomb.

[jeff47]

3. They have enough uranium. It isn't enriched enough yet.

And under previous agreements they stopped enriching it.

You need ~90-95% enriched uranium to make a bomb. Iran previously agreed to diluting its stockpile to at most 20% enriched.

[Motown_Johnny]

4. That was my understanding too.

The way she said it, it sounded to me as if they were ready to make 10 bombs right now.

Thanks for posting.

[HooptieWagon]

5. Even if they had enough enriched uranium....

They would still need a reliable delivery system.

[jeff47]

6. With a uranium bomb, that's very easy.

You just need to put a little under 15 pounds of 95% enriched uranium it in one place. It will go off all on its own.

That's why "Little Boy" was never tested. We didn't need to.

Implosion bombs like "Fat Man" are much harder. Which is why we had the Trinity test first.

[HooptieWagon]

7. How do you get 15 lbs in one place?

Send 15 people with one pound to the target and have them stack it in a pile?
That's what I mean, they would need a reliable means of delivery. Considering its radioactivity, that's hard.

[seveneyes]

8. You keep two pieces just beyond critical distance apart

Then jam them together with HE when you are ready for a bang.

[HooptieWagon]

9. So two porters wearing lead suits...

Carry the bomb parts to the target, place them carefully, set up high explosives, light the fuse, and run like hell (as fast as possible in lead suits). Nobody notices. Right.

You can't just tote enriched uranium around, it's highly radioactive.

[Motown_Johnny]

11. a delivery system could be a truck, or ship

depending on what the target is.

You don't really need an aircraft to deliver it (assuming the people delivering it are willing to die in the blast, or are unaware of what they are delivering).

[jeff47]

14. Iran has aircraft that can carry conventional bombs.

They can use those to drop a copy of "Little Boy" just like we did.

Or you put the warhead on the top of a rocket, like Hezbollah has fired into Israel in the past. They could easily carry two 7.5lb hunks and the small amount of explosives to push them together.

There are also terrorists happily blowing themselves up with conventional explosives. One of them could just slam the two parts together. No need to shield the terrorist from the radiation when they're going to die anyway. Keep the two halves in shielded boxes until they are "deployed".

[mmonk]

12. Yep.

[Maedhros]

10. I looked for an answer, and found this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-it-would-take-iran-to-make-a-nuclear-weapon-2015-3

If Iran brought online its other nearly 9,000 IR-1s, breakout time would be about three months with natural uranium feedstock and four to six weeks with 3.5 percent UF6 feedstock. Iran has also developed the more advanced IR-2m centrifuge, rated at 5 SWU/year. If the 1,000 IR-2ms installed at Natanz were used in conjunction with all 18,000 IR-1s, the respective breakout times would be cut by a third.

They are talking about breakout time, which is the amount of time required for Iran to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to make one bomb. That implies that they don't yet have enough...(article was from March 2015).

Methinks Boxer is exaggerating - but surely, this information must come from intelligence sources and would therefore be classified. Interesting that they can have access to, and tell us about, secret intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program, but they can't see or say squadoosh about the TPP.

[Motown_Johnny]

13. Maybe it was just poorly phrased.

She did not say at what level the uranium was enriched. I could have easily misunderstood.


But if that information you posted is accurate, it looks like they could turn out one bomb a month if operating at peak efficiency.


That is a little scary, but it also makes me wonder why they didn't go ahead and do it. It looks like they could have at least one bomb by now if they really wanted it, maybe more.