j_hungary
Professional
I don't tend to speculate when I don't know, I will say I just don't know.Keep in mind, that report dates back to 2023. At the time, the concern centered on an estimated 130kg of 60% enriched uranium. That figure has since surged to around 400kg.
While I’m not a nuclear expert, it would be naive to assume they haven’t already enriched some of it to 85% by now cinsiderinf as you said, easier to enrich from 60% to 85% then 0 to 60%.
But to stay focused on my main point: despite claims of a significant strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure targeting both facilities and expertise their own intelligence assessments concede that the setback amounts to only a few months, not decades.
Ultimately, we may never truly know the full extent of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, especially with the possibility of undisclosed black sites scattered across its vast territory. One thing seems certain Fordow will not be the last underground facility they willl build.
Did Iran have 85% HEU? Maybe, I don't know, and no one is know for sure, the issue here is, going back to your previous question, now assuming that the cake is intact and store somewhere safe, and assuming you have stored all the test log, the important question now is, whether the centrifuge stopped or damaged. Because it's not plug and play, you can't put it back up and put the uranium cake back in and it goes back from wherever you take it out before. So if that 6 months or so delay is on the fuel side (ie, the centrifuge is not damage and you just taken the fuel out), that's easy to retify, you just need to refuel the centrifuge, but if the centrifuge was damaged and need 6 months to repair? That's going take a long time to recalibrate the centrifuge after making it operational again, sure, it will not be decades like it was before, but it is going to be year, if not years for Iran to pick back up the process. And again, that is assuming the fuel cake is intact
It didn't matter if they had a replacement facilities, because you are going to need to fine tune the centrifuge to spin in a particular way to keep the U238 separating from U235, that's going to take a long time to do because you are talking about adjustment in micron unit







