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November 3, 2013

Those Pesky Reactors

You scrimp and save and sweat and worry while raising a young reactor and this is what happens.
Tehran did its utmost to conceal the mystery blast which last week struck the heavy water reactor under construction at Arak in western Iran. It is revealed here for the first time by DebkaFile's intelligence and Iranian sources. The explosion, whether accidental or not, will delay for a second time the reactor’s first test with real fuel. Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in August of a previous holdup.

The cause of the blast and the extent of the damage it caused have not yet been established. According to the partial information initially reaching our sources, it occurred inside the reactor building when preparations were underway for a test scheduled for this month with artificial fuel and light water. The site of the explosion may have been the large coolant containers and the pressure gauges attached to the reactor’s core.

Iranian Atomic Council experts and intelligence agents are testing four possible causes of the explosion:

1. Sabotage.
2. A virus planted in the computers that control the systems administering the test.
3. An error in engineering calculations in the design of the coolant containers which underestimated their strength for standing up to the required level of pressure.
4. The deliberate sale to Iran of inferior steel materials that were not strong enough to withstand such pressure.
It's a shame when a young reactor goes astray.
H/T Atlas Shrugs

8 comments:

Opus #6 said...

Golly. How did that happen.

Gorges Smythe said...

Three out of four would blame others. Do you think they might be a little paranoid?

sig94 said...

Opus - musta been a static electricity build up in the camel harness.

sig94 said...

Gorges - just a bit? For good reason?

sig94 said...

Doom - IMHO, if Iran launches, Israel is going settle her hash. Or hummus...

Subvet said...

It could just as easily been shoddy work on the part of the Iranians. The leaders of their theocracy push a cult that discourages analytical thinking, since everything happens only if Allas wills it. This is unlike Western thinking that grew out of a belief in a God who set in place actual laws of natural science.

A while back I was corresponding with a government security contractor (Blackwater?? I dunno, he didn't say and I didn't ask.) Anyway, according to that gent people who follow the Pedophile Prophet in the MidEast will literally believe anything. You name it, they'll go for it.

So who knows what kind of "quality control" was/wasn't exercised at these sites.

Woodsterman (Odie) said...

Aw shucks ...

Undergroundpewster said...

I don't know how to react to that.