No I said 9000KG of lower grade uranium.
Yes, but only 200 kilograms of it is 20%, the rest is 3.5%.
I think it can be shorter. But we have to agree to disagree on this.
We are not discussing Ghormeh-Sabzi to agree to disagree. It's physics and mathematics. The only way it can be shorter is if the SWU of an IR-9 machine is higher than 30. Your initial statement was +20, so I went up and assumed it was 30 and did the math.
Also, Iran had never deployed IR-9 machines. So, its actual SWU in practice is unknown and can only estimated based on theoretical limits. And ICAC was flattened by the US and Israel in last year's June, meaning that we cannot produce new centrifuges and all we have is what we have stored confidentially prior to this incident.
No, the point of my comment wasn’t actually building the bomb that fast. The point was how absurd people are focusing only on the HEU when Iran can regenerate it. That’s why Trump won’t stop with just the HEU.
Fair enough.
Russians are leaving in droves. Decent possibility Israel hits it next week. I’m sure there is only a tiny skeleton crew left.
And it’s quite simple to reprocess it actually. You should read this article.
Plutonium reprocessing is simple because it's a chemical process but it still needs well-equipped facilities because it's radioactive and extremely dangerous to humans and the environment.
By Russia’s own admission there are 210 tons of spent fuel at the plant.
Now you can see why Israel keeps bombing around the plant, because it’s worried Iran will attempt to remove the spent fuel as well like it did the Fordow material days before the bombing.
Yes, the current nuclear reactor at Bushehr uses 27 tones of 3.5% LEU. 210 tons of spent fuel is pretty close to its calculated output. I never challenged that.
The issue is that this 210 kilograms of plutonium is not Pu-239, which is the fissile isotope of plutonium and it is contaminated with a lot of Pu-240, which is non-fissile. And since isotopes cannot be separated chemically, you will still need to use isotope separation on this spent fuel. So, basically, you still need laser isotope separation or gas centrifuges or any other method of isotope enrichment.
The other solution is to change the burnup ratio of the reactor by adjusting its neutron flux or other methods. As a rule of thumb, low burnup gives more PU-239 and less Pu-240. Higher burnup gives more Pu-240 and Pu-241, which are non-fissile isotopes.
