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| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
coulda swore i read somewhere they were in possesion of more centrifuges than that. i'll look. |
According to this they only have 164 and it would take them two decades to produce a bomb with that many:
| quote: | | It would take Iran about two decades to yield enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb with its current cascade of 164 centrifuges. But Tehran says it wants to install 3,000 centrifuges, enough to produce material for a warhead in a year. |
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/intern...y=1144805877000
More technically:
| quote: | | An implosion weapon using U235 would require about 20 kg of 90% U235. Roughly 176 kg of natural uranium would be required per kg of HEU product, and about 230 SWU per kg of HEU, thus requiring a total of about 4,600 SWU per weapon. To enrich natural uranium for one gun-type uranium bomb would requires roughly 14,000 SWUs. Thus, producing one HEU weapon in a year would require between 1,100 to perhaps 3,500 centrifuges. |
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/i...-centrifuge.htm
| quote: | | a "long way" on the atomic scale is "relative"...get it? |
I'm struggling to find information about how accessible these additional centrifuges that Iran wants to build would be in terms of cost or technological know-how (Iran may not be able to afford to, or know how to, build these additional centrifuges) but until they are built, or it seems that they are close to being built, the issue isn't urgent in the sense that Iran is currently on the brink of "getting the bomb". By any definition, Iran is still a fair way from producing even a single nuclear bomb, let alone an entire nuclear arsenal.
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