TheRealKuni

And it’s on the IAEA to declare that they are indeed working on a weapons program, not speculation and assumption like yours.

Okay. Don’t use your reason if you’d prefer not to. It does make me wonder though:

Do you think the killing of the civilian scientists was wrong because they were civilian scientists, or because they were ostensibly working on an energy program?

Because as I said, I’m not claiming the murders were justified, just that we ought to be honest about the why.

There are plenty making the argument that Iran needs a nuclear weapons program to prevent exactly these types of attacks. That is intellectually honest. I’m not sure where I fall on that argument, I’d rather no one have nuclear weapons (but obviously that’s not going to happen).

The difference between 5% and 60% enrichment is pretty huge. And the research and effort required to get there is neither cheap nor easy. If what they’re after is nuclear energy, there is absolutely no reason to continue risking the ire of the international community and the repeated attacks by Israel. They’ve had energy-level uranium for a very long time already.

Thank you. The depths of that man’s evil never cease to amaze me.

According to the IAEA, the Natanz site was producing uranium enriched to 60% u-235.

For electricity, you need 3-5% u-235.

That’s not an energy program, that’s a weapons program.

It’s civilian scientists working on nuclear energy we are talking about.

Is it though? What level of enrichment do they need for a nuclear energy program, and what level of enrichment were they at? I think it’s naive to say they weren’t working on a weapon.

I’m not saying it justifies killing civilian scientists, but we ought to be honest about the why.

I don’t believe that has been confirmed, but I could be wrong.

Edit: I stand corrected.

It also helps to be as far south as possible. You get to use more momentum to help get orbit, if I understand it correctly.

IIRC, that’s why NASA launches from Florida. That and the coast making launch failures safer.

(But I am not a physicist.)

Oh don’t worry, I wasn’t accusing you of saying they were worthless. I was just voicing my own concern for some of my former coworkers.

Having worked in a call center (doing survey research) during college, there are a lot of people employed by such places who really wouldn’t have many employment options anywhere else.

I remember saying, while there, that the entire industry would be replaced by AI in 10-15 years. They all scoffed, saying they had ways to get people to answer surveys that an AI wouldn’t be able to do. I told them they were being naive.

Here we are.

That said, I do worry about some of those people. Just because they were borderline unemployable doesn’t mean they were worthless.