Iran - Nuclear Test

Author
Discussion

ruggedscotty

Original Poster:

5,792 posts

216 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/...

If this is indeed the case then this is going to change the dynamics.
Will Israel back off, or will they think if they dont get in now then the chance has been lost ?

Who knows but if iran has achieved Nuclear capability then things are going to get worse.


HenryV1415

1,248 posts

227 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
I dread the news that Iran has acquired the bomb. I live in hope that one day I wake up to the news that Iranian Nuclear facilities have been retired forcibly by Israel or the West

TheJimi

25,741 posts

250 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
ruggedscotty said:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/...

If this is indeed the case then this is going to change the dynamics.
Will Israel back off, or will they think if they dont get in now then the chance has been lost ?

Who knows but if iran has achieved Nuclear capability then things are going to get worse.
Have you lined the back of your couch with lead yet?

nuyorican

1,865 posts

109 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Hmm, if I were Putin, might it be a good idea to furnish/enable Iran with nuclear capability on the sly? Because ten minutes after handing them the bomb you just know they'll be lobbing it at Israel. Then with 'the west' preoccupied with that, time to go heavy on Ukraine.

Gargamel

15,217 posts

268 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
nuyorican said:
Hmm, if I were Putin, might it be a good idea to furnish/enable Iran with nuclear capability on the sly? Because ten minutes after handing them the bomb you just know they'll be lobbing it at Israel. Then with 'the west' preoccupied with that, time to go heavy on Ukraine.
The idea that so far Putin has been ‘restrained’ in the invasion on Ukraine is absurd.

Russia has thrown almost everything it has at Ukraine bar tactical nuclear weapons.

Sure, Russia could kill more people, but it doesn’t have a way to take and hold land.

Tango13

8,921 posts

183 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Epicentre 10km or 6.2 miles below the surface? I'm not sure bomb tests are carried out that deep, I thought 2000~2500m was the usual test depth depending on the type of ground/rock.

nuyorican

1,865 posts

109 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Gargamel said:
The idea that so far Putin has been ‘restrained’ in the invasion on Ukraine is absurd.

Russia has thrown almost everything it has at Ukraine bar tactical nuclear weapons.

Sure, Russia could kill more people, but it doesn’t have a way to take and hold land.
True.

Solocle

3,638 posts

91 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Tango13 said:
Epicentre 10km or 6.2 miles below the surface? I'm not sure bomb tests are carried out that deep, I thought 2000~2500m was the usual test depth depending on the type of ground/rock.
The deepest bored hole on Earth was 12.2 km. A massive engineering feat, with a diameter of 23 cm.

To dig a full nuke 10 km down? It's not even clear such a thing is possible, and certainly would be massive overkill.

eharding

14,147 posts

291 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Solocle said:
Tango13 said:
Epicentre 10km or 6.2 miles below the surface? I'm not sure bomb tests are carried out that deep, I thought 2000~2500m was the usual test depth depending on the type of ground/rock.
The deepest bored hole on Earth was 12.2 km. A massive engineering feat, with a diameter of 23 cm.

To dig a full nuke 10 km down? It's not even clear such a thing is possible, and certainly would be massive overkill.
Iran having the technology to place a nuke 10km down to test it would be a hell of a lot more worrying than Iran just having a nuke.

otolith

59,066 posts

211 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
ruggedscotty said:
Will Israel back off, or will they think if they dont get in now then the chance has been lost ?
Or is the story being seeded to justify the latter?

Gareth79

8,039 posts

253 months

Tuesday 8th October
quotequote all
Tango13 said:
Epicentre 10km or 6.2 miles below the surface? I'm not sure bomb tests are carried out that deep, I thought 2000~2500m was the usual test depth depending on the type of ground/rock.
A twitter post about it was community noted that none of the nuclear test sensors were triggered either.

hidetheelephants

27,824 posts

200 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
eharding said:
Solocle said:
Tango13 said:
Epicentre 10km or 6.2 miles below the surface? I'm not sure bomb tests are carried out that deep, I thought 2000~2500m was the usual test depth depending on the type of ground/rock.
The deepest bored hole on Earth was 12.2 km. A massive engineering feat, with a diameter of 23 cm.

To dig a full nuke 10 km down? It's not even clear such a thing is possible, and certainly would be massive overkill.
Iran having the technology to place a nuke 10km down to test it would be a hell of a lot more worrying than Iran just having a nuke.
Nuclear warheads have been fitted in 155mm and 152mm artillery shells so it's feasible but not likely, given the vast resources needed to develop the technology. By necessity the first iranian nuclear weapons are likely to be fairly crude unless significant outside help has been given.

Captain Obvious

5,746 posts

213 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
Iran has quakes all the time, absolutely ridiculous source to pull a "story" from also.

hairykrishna

13,582 posts

210 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
What a load of bks. Nobody is testing a nuke that far down. Particularly not Iran. If they get a nuke it won't be a test designed to hide it, they'll want to advertise it as an invasion deterrent.

Mannginger

9,485 posts

264 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
"A Twitter user said"

Right so as reliable as all this trash about the Democrats causing the Hurricane on it's way to Florida...

wc98

11,175 posts

147 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
Eh, naw. Earthquakes were a regular occurrence when i lived there, was quite exciting as a kid the first couple of times it happened. Everyone will know the day the Iranians are either close to having or have a nuclear weapon capable of being sent outside of Iran as there will be a big smoking hole in the ground where it was. Given the current regime there is no way on earth they will be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons.

Would be willing to bet a significant proportion of the people working on their nuclear programs either work for or are in contact with the CIA, UK Secret Service and Mossad at the very least.

Tango13

8,921 posts

183 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
wc98 said:
Eh, naw. Earthquakes were a regular occurrence when i lived there, was quite exciting as a kid the first couple of times it happened. Everyone will know the day the Iranians are either close to having or have a nuclear weapon capable of being sent outside of Iran as there will be a big smoking hole in the ground where it was. Given the current regime there is no way on earth they will be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons.

Would be willing to bet a significant proportion of the people working on their nuclear programs either work for or are in contact with the CIA, UK Secret Service and Mossad at the very least.
Agree with all of this.

With regards the last paragraph Heisenberg, the head of the German atomic research during WW2 basically lied about the feasibility of building an atomic bomb stating it couldn't be done. He maintained this position when captured and questioned by the allies at the end of the war in Europe until he heard of the attacks on Japan. At that point he was overhead explaining to his fellow captive scientists exactly how to build an bomb.

Makes me wonder what 'difficulties' the Iranian scientists are struggling with wink

geeks

9,737 posts

146 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
Tango13 said:
wc98 said:
Eh, naw. Earthquakes were a regular occurrence when i lived there, was quite exciting as a kid the first couple of times it happened. Everyone will know the day the Iranians are either close to having or have a nuclear weapon capable of being sent outside of Iran as there will be a big smoking hole in the ground where it was. Given the current regime there is no way on earth they will be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons.

Would be willing to bet a significant proportion of the people working on their nuclear programs either work for or are in contact with the CIA, UK Secret Service and Mossad at the very least.
Agree with all of this.

With regards the last paragraph Heisenberg, the head of the German atomic research during WW2 basically lied about the feasibility of building an atomic bomb stating it couldn't be done. He maintained this position when captured and questioned by the allies at the end of the war in Europe until he heard of the attacks on Japan. At that point he was overhead explaining to his fellow captive scientists exactly how to build an bomb.

Makes me wonder what 'difficulties' the Iranian scientists are struggling with wink
Did he lie, or was he just uncertain?

Tango13

8,921 posts

183 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
geeks said:
Did he lie, or was he just uncertain?
rofl

otolith

59,066 posts

211 months

Wednesday 9th October
quotequote all
Tango13 said:
Agree with all of this.

With regards the last paragraph Heisenberg, the head of the German atomic research during WW2 basically lied about the feasibility of building an atomic bomb stating it couldn't be done. He maintained this position when captured and questioned by the allies at the end of the war in Europe until he heard of the attacks on Japan. At that point he was overhead explaining to his fellow captive scientists exactly how to build an bomb.

Makes me wonder what 'difficulties' the Iranian scientists are struggling with wink
The basic principles of the physics are easy to grasp. Engineering and manufacturing the device, obtaining the raw materials and engineering, building, and running the facilities to produce enough fissile material, while under embargo, while your facilities are being sabotaged and your scientists assassinated - less easy.

The design of the Hiroshima device was very simple, two big sub-critical lumps of highly enriched uranium smashed together by cordite propellant. Simple, and reliable enough that they didn't even test one before they used it, but very inefficient in bang-for-buck (problematic if you are struggling to make enough fissile material) and an unavoidably large assembly. The Nagasaki device (like the one tested in the Trinity test) was a plutonium based implosion design with a sub-critical sphere of enriched plutonium compressed to critical mass by shaped charges, much more efficient, much more complicated, much harder to design, and still too big to go on the end of a rocket. It took a lot more R&D to get to a device you could fit in a missile or even in a backpack or an artillery shell. Most nukes from the late 50's onward are multi-stage thermonuclear devices using a fission-fusion process to get massively more yield from a smaller device.



So, yeah, you can easily describe how one would work in principle, but actually making a viable weapon to rival those of other nuclear powers is a whole other thing.