Although he hadn’t done anything wrong, fearing the mere possibility of a loss of control, the warden put Luke in the box when his mother died. So Luke said (subtextually), “I might as well do what they punished me for,” and spent the rest of the movie trying to escape.

The NoKo’s had around 500 tons of yellowcake to work with which would have been good for about 15 bombs.

I see you’re not a nuclear scientist, either. Uranium hexafluoride and “yellowcake” — uranium oxide — are not the same thing. Uranium hexafluoride is refined from uranium oxide, so it doesn’t take as long to go from UH to a bomb than it takes to go from UO to a bomb.You’re comparing apples to oranges.

BTW, I believe precise information about what was enriched to make the hiroshima bomb, and where the uranium came from, is still classified.

more like months or weeks if you have an efficient centrifuge sysem.

They didn’t, though, which you would have known had you read the post all the way through. See in particular the Foreign Affairs article cited above. From the article:

It is much easier to make low-enriched uranium (LEU)–the fuel needed to power light-water plutonium reactors–than it is to make weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), as Washington has accused Pyongyang of doing. A relatively small number of centrifuges is needed to make LEU, but the production of HEU in quantities sufficient for nuclear weapons requires the continuous operation of hundreds–or thousands–of centrifuges over a long period. Richard Garwin, a respected nuclear scientist, has estimated that 1,300 high-performance centrifuges would have to operate full time for three years to make the 60 kilograms of fissile material needed for a basic (”gun-type”) nuclear weapon. Accomplishing that would require an enormous sustained input of electricity, without fluctuation or interruption. Moreover, the operation of a multi-centrifuge “cascade” requires a high-powered motor with a speed twice that of a MiG-21 jet engine. North Korea cannot produce engines even for its Russian-supplied MiGs, and it has only limited, highly unreliable electricity capabilities. It is therefore unlikely that the country is able at present to build or operate the equipment needed, over a long period, to produce weapons-grade uranium.

We don’t know exactly when the NoKo’s started to violate the agreement they made not to enrich U-238. But anyone who believes that they waited until 2002 is a ninny.

As I said in the post, the Clinton Administration knew about alleged uranium processing by about 1998.

By the time the North announced that they would unilaterally chuck the accords, they probably already had enough HE uranium to make 3-5 bombs.

Except they didn’t. They have enough plutonium for at least 3-5 bombs now, though, thanks to the Bush Administration.

Very basically, that’s a crock.

The Hiroshima bomb contained about 112 lbs of U-238 - highly enriched uranium. The uranium was enriched from approx. 30 tons of U-235 (Uranium hex) through gaseous diffusion. There are much more efficient methods today requiring much less Uranium.

It hardly takes “years” to process it - more like months or weeks if you have an efficient centrifuge sysem. The NoKo’s had around 500 tons of yellowcake to work with which would have been good for about 15 bombs.

As for Plutonium (U-239), this is a synthetic and is created by bombarding the U-238 with nuetrons in a reactor.

We don’t know exactly when the NoKo’s started to violate the agreement they made not to enrich U-238. But anyone who believes that they waited until 2002 is a ninny. And what Clinton didn’t know was that AQ Khan had been working with the NoKo’s on a very sophisticated cascade centrifuge system since at least 1995, smuggling the system into the North via his black market contacts.

By the time the North announced that they would unilaterally chuck the accords, they probably already had enough HE uranium to make 3-5 bombs.

When oh when are we going to have an effective opposition? You don’t show up at a gunfight with knives. In that sense, in terms of being woefully unprepared to do battle and win, Kerry was indeed outclassed.

As long as John ‘Day Late and a Dollar Short’ Kerry is on our team it ain’t gonna matter one little bit.

If’n yer can’t bother to git to the meetin’ on time…

TAKE YER USELESS ASS BACK HOME AND GIVE YER SEAT TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO SERVE THE NATION.

Being an AssClown is NOT restricted to ReThugs. We got Kerry and we also got: The Boxer Short.

I look forward to Ned Lamont and others like him taking to the Senate floor. I think we’ll see a change.