Breaking: Iran’s ‘Fordow’ Nuke Plant Now Fully Operational
According to Mehr News Agency, sources within Iran revealed that there will be an announcement in a few days that the previously secret nuclear site, the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, is now fully operational and enriching uranium at a 20% level.
The world learned about the existence of this site in 2009 when the Iranians disclosed it to the IAEA right before President Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France made statements at the G-20 summit in Pittsburg that referenced the secret Iranian site.
The site is built deep into a mountain on a Revolutionary Guards’ base near the city of Qom.
The Iranian leaders had intended to transfer much of their low-enriched uranium stock from Natanz to Fordow and to start the process of enrichment at a much higher level with protection against any attack.
It is reported that the site cannot be destroyed even with the current bunker-buster bombs kept in the U.S. military’s arsenal.
It should be noted that the Fordow facility can only house 3,000 centrifuges, and is therefore useless for providing fuel for a nuclear power plant. The only purpose is for clandestine use or for making a nuclear bomb. It is also important to note that enriching uranium to the 20% level is 9/10 of the way to weaponization.
Iran currently has enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs and continues its illicit nuclear activities despite four different sets of UN sanctions already in place.
On Saturday, marking the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised to announce important news within days on the Iranian nuclear program. At the same time, the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, stated that Iran is ready for the worst-case scenario in its confrontation with the West over its nuclear program.
If bunker buster bombs would not work, would a tactical nuclear device work?
If we did that, the Iranians would have moral justification to nuke Israel off the planet, and history would remember their self defense for what it would be. The West’s disgraceful aggression would be remembered forever.
Bullshit with a cherry on top. You’re comparing a tactical strike on a military installation to millions of civilians? You’re evil.
How would the use of a nuclear weapon by the US give Iran a “moral justification to nuke Israel off the planet”?
Tells a lot that you wrote that.
Apparently, Iran already claims a moral justification for nuking israel in the fact that Israel exists. Nothing we can do now will make a whit of difference to whatever the mullahs and Ahmanutjob plan for the future… except maybe destroying their capabilities (and I wouldn’t mind if they were vaporized as well).
A nuclear weapon would close the entrances and deny access. If I were an Israeli planner, I’d salt the nuke with cobalt, a metal similar to iron. A bunker buster is by definition a ground burst (or close to it). The cobalt becomes activated to Cobalt-60 which emits a high energy gamma ray with a 5+ year half life. This would make accessing the site fatal for some time to come. Pick a windless morning to keep the fallout as local as possible.
The Israelis were rumored to emplace such weapons (maybe with sodium for a shorter half life) as land mines in key passes in the Sinai following one of their earlier wars with Egypt. The US calls them “atomic demolition munitions” or ADMs.
Sorry that such devices exist but sometimes it takes evil to surpress evil.
No, evil only breeds more evil.
However, well-placed violence is often successful at suppressing evil.
Your mistake is conflating violence with evil.
I believe Ezekiel 39 mentions that the weapons will burn for seven years. Sounds a lot like that cobalt bomb you were mentioning.
The initial objective would be to prevent them from firing the projectiles they have, not destroying the manufacturing site.
The cyclotrons can go on whirling forever if the missiles can’t be launched. If they can fire them from underground, there is a launching shaft and they are vulnerable.
indeed, and so are any doors and tunnels leading into the underground areas of the site.
Block those with a few million tons of collapsed rock and you effectively seal anything (and anyone) inside.
Not permanently maybe, but for a long time and the effort needed to dig it all out again may be enough to make it not worthwhile even for the Iranians to attempt.
I’ve been thinking along the same lines. Even the deepest facility has an entrance somewhere through which goods and personnel enter, power and water are provided, etc. Seal them in and cut them off from their outside support and they’re out of commission. And if those buried under the rubble don’t survive, their expertise dies with them.
If it was me, I’d go for the tactical nuke deal. Target those shafts & send a coupla tactical nukes to Iranian military & political centers too. Couldn’t hurt! Hey, everyone except for Americans hate Israel anyway. Why bother w/ public relations & any backlash?
Obama’s treacherous tactics are bearing fruit: He has now succeeded to create the ultimate monster (Iran ) who will wipe out, Israel, mollify the Gulf petro-monarchies into surrender, jackup the barrel of oil to 150 $, and bring Europe and Japan into submission to the fanatics goons of Teheran. What a wonderful landscape ; Obama’s outstretched hand received a a finger up to his butt from Iran.What a glorious grand finale, Obama has succeeded to shipwreck the western world; the real question is :Obama is just plain stupid, or he is a radical-leftist mole ? Both reasons are enough to kick him out of the White House asap.
Think more the barrel about 250-300 not only 150this in case of new islamic republics in the gulf.,
Any rapidly spinning device, such as a centrifuge, is susceptible to problems with precession (i.e. the gyro becoming uncaged). So one mighty jolt ought to destroy all those centrifuges in one fell swoop!
Anyone want to say a prayer for an earthquake???
That would have a built in backup plan as well. We know from Fukushima that an unintended consequence of an earthquake could be a loss of power, which leads to a loss of basic utility services, which can lead to nasty things such as the loss of incoming freash air so the inhabitants don’t die of carbon dioxide asphyxiation.
Pray FOR a earthquake! The region is quite prone to them.
The problem with rat holes is that they tend to have more than one entrance/exit. Of course, if the roof of the cavern is dropped-in, that should solve the problem. One has to assume that the Iranians are not stupid and that they didn’t design/plan the entrance tunnels as straight lines to the main producing sections of the plant. Whatever is used to hit Fodorow will have to be capable of either sealing all entrance/exit tunnels or dropping the roof onto the equipment. I seem to recall that we used to have nukes that were capable of vaporizing about one-half a cubic mile of rock. That would do.
You might want to do the math on that. Vaporizing a half cubic mile of rock is considerably beyond the capabilities of modern nuclear weapons.
You need at least a couple of starships for that.
O.K., maybe not half a cubic mile, but a 20MT weapon makes a very large hole, to say noting of the shock underneath it.
A ground burst produces a crater. The following table shows crater sizes:
Crater Sizes
Yield Width
(feet) Width
(m) Depth
(feet) Depth
(m)
20kT 633 193 80 24
600kT 2112 643 211 64
20MT 7392 2253 792 241
1) http://www.tinyvital.com/Misc/nukes.htm
Bet the bombs could entomb everything inside and make it radioactive. same result.
The problem with attacking the site directly, especially with nuclear weapons, is that we have no true justifiable reason for doing so. Since we are not treating Iran’s past aggressions against us as acts of war, which perhaps we should be doing, but are not, there is no reason which could be justified in the international arena for attacking these facilities. To do so would be viewed as an unprovoked attack, which could justify responses by Iran’s allies (NK, Russia, China). This is especially true if we go throwing nukes around. I can absolutely guarantee you that the use of a nuclear weapon against these facilities would cause a response by either Russia or China.
Of course dear Paul sitting in Alexandria , you PERSONNALLY have no reason to fendoff an attacker , unless he breaks right into you home.But we are now seeing a much larger than you home+garden field of operations.Wake up to your maps,open your ears to the hatred speeches, to the multi-pronged attacks all over the mideast against anything that is remotely western, christian, liberal, democratic, jewish, intelligent, reasonnable.It s Kulturkampf marching on the western world which is in danger, Israel first then the Gulf petro-monarchies, then Europe and Japan, then you Paul, in Alexandria.
Where do you guys even get these ideas? Iran has not invaded anyone in FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. Look it up, it’s a little thing called history. Where do you even get ideas like, “Hm. I have one 20 kiloton nuke, let me attack either one guy with advanced fighter bombers and ICBMS and 300 megaton or better warheads”, or the even more amusing “Hm. I just made a nuke, let me put it in a steam powered wooden rocket and hope it makes it to the U.S. where they will shoot it down and give us a generous sampling of their 35,000 nuclear warheads.” I mean sure, they’re religious and all but you’re talking about the RICH people getting killed too. You can bet your very last dollar ain’t no rich people in Iraq lining up for Armageddon. Not to mention, how is an attack on Iran going to make their next door neighbors the Pakistani, who DO have hundreds of warheads feel? Might they not correctly assume that if they wait to deploy them they will in turn be invaded? And even more not to mention, where is this money coming from we’re spending invading Iran? You ARE aware we’re not getting tribute or something from Iraq and Afghanistan, right? FOUR TRILLION dollars pissed down a rathole and what did we get for it? Safer?!?!?! Don’t make me laugh! BEFORE 9/11 our own government needed a REASON to drag us out of our homes and ‘disappear’ us forever. Between the Patriot Act and NDAA we live in Communist Russia. You SHOULD feel unsafe because you’re NOT safe. Every minute those laws are in effect NOTHING is stopping the government from dragging you away at any moment. You won’t get a trail and they don’t need any evidence. Do you feel ‘safer’ now? Really? Really?
The genie is out of the bottle as France, UK, Israel, US, Russia, China, N Korea, Pakistan and India have the bomb. No one including Israel will be attacking Iran as the targets are to disbursed and it will be horrific on both Iran and Israel.
Iran unlike Israel did sign the UN accords regarding nuclear weapons and are in violation but they have a point in that Israel has them and never been inspected by the UN plus why is the US allowed to develop new types of nuclear weapons and they do not have that right?
Now I would prefer they stop as they really can not afford it but to their thinking once they have it invasions will be off the table.
In regards to nuclear weapons I’m far more fearful of Pakistan and keeping their nukes out of the hands of their religious freaks.
Reagan was right in trying to disband all nuclear weapons because in the long run someone somewhere will be stupid enough to use them again.
As for the idiots who have said let’s just drop some tactical nukes – you’re insane.
So, you’re for gun control too?
There is no such thing as a “right” to develop nuclear weapons or any other weapon for that matter.
If US develops new stealth fighters or an advanced missile do we not try and prevent adversaries from getting the same? Of course we do. Anything else is idiotic.
There is nothing fair about war. The whole idea of a new weapon, nuclear or otherwise, is meant to introduce an advantage over an enemy or potential enemy.
Israel only has them because they got away with a secret program at a time when you could do that. If they just got started now there is no way they would get away with it. Same for Pakistan. In the case of Iran it is right in front of us. Nothing fair about it.
One might argue about US interests here but in the case of Israel the case is crystal clear. Iranian government has announced their intentions for Israel on many occasions. In case we forget they repeat it for us once a week.
“It is reported that the site cannot be destroyed even with the current bunker-buster bombs …” Very likely true, but access to the site could be made near impossible.
We have nuclear bunker buster bombs. At least we did under Bush. Those would work.
A clarifying point:
“…. enriching uranium to the 20% level is 9/10 of the way to weaponization.” is inaccurate. True it is 9/10 of the effort to make bomb grade fuel, but other technologies are required to make a deliverable weapon. However, and a big however, is that 20% enrichment, in the west, has only one purpose, to make bomb grade fuel. Civilian power plants use ~ 3+ % enrichment, for this reason. No private entity is allowed to approach the bright hard line, weaponization.
The tactics of destroying an underground facility is classified as well as interdicting their surface support facilities. I leave this topic to others.
The replies discussing first use of a nuclear strike against any nation is the essential issue, if and when Iran successfully achieves a nuclear weapon. Military thinkers consider Israel a one bomb target, one mushroom can annihilate their nation. Today, the Israeli government faces a hideous decision, first strike based on uncertain intelligence. With nukes, or conventional weapons? Their time frame is much shorter than what Obama is thinking. If Iran has hardened facilities with 20% HEU, the only question is when. But is it a lie? George Bush started a decade long war on this very issue, and Obama excoriated him on his decision.
Let Congress hear the Iranian announcement, and draw some clear lines defining war. This would include enemies in South American nations. Never again should the United States back into war with a divided nation. This must be debated in this election.
We live in terrible times. God bless Americans, Israelis, Iranians and Venezuelans.
A gun type device requires little in the way of technical capability. If they are building uranium bombs, then once they have the weapons grade fuel, they would need only a delivery system capable of handling the payload in order to turn it into an effective weapon.
Awesome!!!
Go Iran!
Yeah, we need re-enact “Threads” in Tabriz!
Several comments….
It has been established the Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon programme of sorts but foolishly engaged in brinksmanship seeking to gain nuclear deterance on the cheap…Iran may be engaging in this….”let’s not and say we are.”
It is preposterous to claim that the Russians or Chinese will suicidally elect GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR to support an Islamic entity….when both have restive islamic populations.
Tactical nuclear weapons lost most of their raison d’etre with the developement of cruise missiles capable of flying through a window pane from 1500 miles away.
The adits to underground bunkers are vulnerable to cruise missiles and “smart bombs”…..
The first target will be the air defenses, together with the top ranking officials of the regime and any and every system of communication.
The mountains can be made unreachable.
The barracks of all the Revolutionary Guards would disappear next.
The refinery (-ies) next, and pipelines and ports. Roads, bridges, power plants.
It would be terribly harsh for the iranian people.
Can be done really fast.
And the call to exterminate all the Jews is casus belli in front of the International Law.
The iranian regime has only two choices: step back or be destroyed.
They seem too stupid to understand it.
PS And the regime would certainly try to escalate the conflict, thus compelling even this administration to move.
And again, if they don’t escalate they are lost, if they escalate they are lost.
Followed by the worst U.S. naval defeat since Pearl Harbor, and a few aircraft carriers sinking to the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
http://www.rense.com/general64/fore.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
http://www.armytimes.com/legacy/new/0-292925-1060102.php
Adolph Hussein obamas major accomplishes will be
1 the man who destroyed the US health care system
2 the man who bankrupted our nation and caused our AAA rating to be down graded
3 the man who allowed Iran to produce a nuke
4 the man who made every 1 in 5 US citizens rely on govt assistance
5 the man who committed high treason and got away with it because he was black
6 the man who edged out peanut farmer jima carter as worst president in US hist
Our provincial Western outlook needs to be changed. War is declared against geographical entities, and once declared it is pursued by all means.
We should have lesser means of warfare in mind, reserving to self whether increasing or lessening intensity.
We should expand war to include waging it against any entity having a foreign policy actively hostile to the US. An entity would include all those down to the level of the little group which hijacked the cruise ship and dumped the tourist and his wheelchair overboard.
Hamas blew up the Marines in Lebanon; we need a declaration of war against Hamas. We can freeze their bank accounts or something, adding actions as the circumstances suggest.
****
Our present bunker buster bomb will not bust Iran’s deepest. It will take until 2015 to come up with a better one.
The mental assumption is that a single bomb must do the job. Before that is considered, is it possible to put a second bomb down the same hole made by the first? Or even a third?
Not acting is not an option. Iran has openly discussed the desirability of an EMP nuke detonated at high altitude above Kansas and has practiced launching large rockets from the decks of cargo ships from the Caspian Sea. Rough estimates of the impact of that would be that US technology would be fried back to roughly the 1849 level until all the electric repairs are done and would take long enough that folks are going to have to depend on their cases of granola bars stashed in the root cellars.
There is nothing in Iran’s doctrine of almost complete and holistic Later Verse Enthusiasm which would hesitate a second when firing a nuke would destroy the Great Satan and cause the 12th Imam to return.
If I was on the Israel command, I’d opt for the tactical nuke (provided there is no wonder weapon in the baking like stuxnet or so).
If I was on American command, I’d opt for the EMP, and let them re built from the neolithic in a fresh start.
Maybe the super bomb can not destroy the site but… it can destroy the access tunnels and bury the personal for a long long time.
Is it possible or likely that Iran’s bombastic threats are designed to instill fear into America’s war weary hearts and a weak political class incapable or unwilling to define, much less confront any threat, no matter how real or obvious, while purposefully distancing themselves from Israel’s hawks? If Israel strikes militarily what the hell will America do, embroiled as it is in two debilitating, protracted, hopeless wars? Not what is it capable of doing, what will it do, obsessed as it is with politically correct rules of engagement and the absolute, stubborn denial of the growing threat of fundamental Islam by those responsible for our nations defense.
Obama and almost the entire crew in Washington and on the European continent have proven themselves to be apparently or purposefully clueless to the threat of fundamental Islam as personified by Iran. There may soon be a rude awakening unless the dhimmi powers in Washington can be convinced that our long support and alliance with Israel was a bad idea and we can make Iran, the Mullahs and the entire Middle East love us by allowing them to turn the Jewish homeland into a nuclear wasteland; the real, fervently longed for final solution that Hitler left unfinished much to the dismay of the Islamists.
Ahmadinejad and Khomeini have stated their intentions widely, loudly and clearly. It would be nice to know if anyone other than the beleaguered Israelis and themselves are taking them seriously. What miracle or divine intervention are we waiting for or is “death to America” in need of clarification?
Preemptive warfare has a notorious tendency to create unintended, unwanted consequences. I sincerely doubt that Japan and Germany planned to be defeated. The good citizens of Iraq still have not greeted our intrusion with bouquets and songs of peace and love, either for us or for each other.
The acquisition of nuclear weapons by a state that holds the official position that we and our allies must be annihilated is bothersome. What are our options if they act on their stated position? Do we care so little for our own lives and those of our friends that absorbing the first blow is an acceptable price to pay for the moral high ground?
There is no such a thing as a MOP (13 ton bomb)unable to bust a bunker : This is a Panetta understatment to Iran, saying : You can get your nuclear toy, we shall not bother you. What a terrible statement .Panetta is just dousing gasoline on the current fire started by Teheran continuous threats to Israel and to the western world.Panetta is much worse than Chamberlain who believed into hitler pledge in 1938.Panetta knows perfectly to what use will serve the nuclear toy Iran is building.Obama rejoices, another hit to the western world, another nuclear war coming because the USA are ” governed ” by such lousy characters.
I anticipate that Israel will take care of this with our without our help.
My .02 cents.
-Matt