> Sorry no links (I closed my RSS reader and deleted/purged
> read articles unfortunately), but I read on Raw Story and
> Truth Out that Rove has received a target letter from
> Fitzgerald and is to be indicted by the grand jury
> tomorrow. Any comments?
Here you go:
> RAW STORY has also learned that an MSNBC report tonight
> revealed that one of Rove's lawyers said the presidential
> adviser described his fifth grand jury appearance as
> "hell."
dear me, "Hell" is a place name and should be capitalized...
> ...Also not boding well for Rove is the fact that the
> grand jury plans to meet tomorrow. Some are speculating
> that an indictment for Rove may be handed up tomorrow,
> though others have claimed such a fast turnaround time
> is unlikely...
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/MSNBC_reports_Rove_believes_he_in_0427.html
> ...Although Rove's attorney Robert Luskin (right) denies
> his client is a "target" in Special Prosecutor Patrick
> Fitzgerald's investigation, sources knowledgeable about
> the probe indicated Wednesday that Rove may face imminent
> indictment.
I'll believe all that when I see it, but I'm going out and buying a bottle a spensive Frensh champain just in case!
Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> Well, folks, that was bright. Hope everybody sharpened
> their pencils and got to work.
>
> What that post was about for those interested.
>
> According to some blog the Iranian separation centrifuges are 1.8m
> tall and run at 350 m/s velocity. I would guess they are about .5m to
> .75m in diameter from looking at the proporitions of other
> centrifuges. So that represents the max volume per centrifuge. They
> claim to have one cascade of 164.
I'm not sure I could calculate the throughput of a UF6 centrifuge from fundamental principles, but I have found a published figure for the efficiency of Pakistan's P-1 and P-2 centrifuges: about 2.5 SWU-kg per year for the P-1 (the kind Iran has today) and about double that for the faster P-2. To translate that into bomb-sized quantities here are some figures I posted elsewhere (OK, fark.com [blush]):
> Using the formula from this page:
>
> http://www.sizes.com/units/separative_work_unit.htm
>
> and assuming Iran starts with a large quantity of natural
> Uranium, from which they intend (at first) to extract 25%
> of the U235, in order to obtain enough 90% U235 for ten
> bombs (200 kg) you get:
>
> X(f) = 0.00711
> X(p) = 0.9
> X(w) = 0.00533
> F = 101266 kg (that's a hundred tons of natural Uranium)
> P = 200 kg
> W = 101066 kg
>
> By the formula, separation then requires 31,000 SWU-kg.
> (I'm assuming that Iran would be in a hurry to get the
> first bomb cores, so they'd trade off a higher X(w) for a
> lower net cost in SWUs. If they wanted to get two-thirds
> of the U235 out, they'd need only 38,000 kg of natural
> Uranium but 43,000 SWU-kg.) The 160 or so aluminum centrifuges
> in Iran's labs, which you've heard so much about lately, are
> the P-1 type which produce about 2.5 SWU-kg per year;
> Pakistan's nuclear engineers have also made a P-2 centrifuge
> of maraging steel, which can stand higher rates of rotation
> and is capable of twice the throughput, or 5 SWU-kg per year.
> So to produce ten bombs's worth of HEU requires about 12,000
> P-1 type centrifuges or 6,000 P-2 centrifuges to run for a
> year. Regarding the power consumption of these centrifuges
> I've read estimates from 50 kWh to 200kWh per SWU-kg; assuming
> 100 kWh per SWU-kg, separating 200 kg of HEU uses about a third
> of a megawatt-year.
>
> In other words, with the facilities they have today, Iran could
> produce 20 kg of HEU, enough for only one single bomb, in about
> seven years. Keep that in mind when you recall the wild claim
> that Iran could produce this quantity of HEU in sixteen days!
> (If you were paying real close attention you'll recall that
> that was a counterfactual, hypothetical argument; to be specific,
> the claim was that if Iran were to miraculously acquire 50,000
> centrifuges, they could manufacture a bomb core every sixteen
> days. Also, if they had functioning magic carpets, flying at
> below-radar altitudes, they could deliver these bombs anywhere
> on the globe!)
>
> If they start with reactor-grade LEU, enriched by the Russians
> to 4% U235 (x(f) = 0.04), and they purify it so the product
> concentration is 90% and the tail concentration is 3% (that is,
> they extract a quarter of the U235 in the LEU, x(w) = 0.03 and
> x(p) = 0.9) the formula says that 18,000 kg of LEU are required
> as feed - a fuel load large enough for a 1000 megawatt reactor!
> - and 5,900 SWU-kg are required for enrichment. Assuming that the
> Iranians buy large quantities of LEU from the Russians and, right
> under the IAEA's noses, they divert enough of it to fuel a power
> reactor to a secret weapons program in violation of the
> Non-Proliferation Treaty and they increase their current
> centrifuge facilities by a factor of ten, they would be able to
> produce about six bombs's worth of HEU a year; of course the
> whole Russian deal is contingent upon Iran ceasing to enrich U235
> domestically!
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net