Stuxnet

I'm sure it was the cables too, BUT there was that minute or two that the Driller was at the Drilling Cabin BOP Panel while the AD was on the phone to the Toolpusher in his bedroom when the well was blowing through the slips but before it caught fire. Why didn't it close then, hanger or pipe joint in the shear rams? Could be, everyone still quite about what they found in the recovered BOP.

Or was the logic changed in the PLC, per BP's instructions, to make it less likely to accidently close the shear rams or disconnect from the Drill Floor?

And how it will end up being blamed on Halliburton because that's who has it coming to the people who have shutdown most ALL the drilling in the GoM.

BP is already off the hook for paying ANY the oil workers who have lost their jobs and everyone is still talking about only a few million gallons being spilled by BP, which will work out to a fine of about the 20B that they have already given the "community organizers" to distribute.

OK, enough on the DWH blowout I'm sure had nothing to do with the Stuxnet worm. I'll go back to gCaptain and the Drillers Club to make posts like this.

BACK ON TOPIC:

My wife posted in her blog, http://ponderingpenguin.blogspot.com/ about the Stuxnet worm, and got this comment from what 'looks' like a non government computer in Virginia:

Anonymous said...The Pentagon is probably just envious:P
And you know the attack was really, really bad when the Iranians try to downplay the Israeli aggression. They must have gotten whacked hard.
They will try to save some space (think Anonymous meant Face here) by using the rest of their bomb fuel to get the plant up and running, but they are set back many years and their reputation of invincibility severely damaged.

Has anyone else about them having to use the fuel from the centrifuges to fuel the reactor?

If the centrifuges are scrap now (as the 100ms delay would cause) this is big news and a real delay to when they can nuke someone.

That would be assuring, Stuxnet did its job over a year ago and there is no need to use it again for another attack that might effect a lot of other PLC's considering how far it's spread now.

Small world, I've run across Pondering Penguin a few times myself....

The reactor was fueled by Russia already. But yes, it is HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium), not LEU like most power plants use. HEU is almost exclusively used for breeder type reactors which are used to generate Plutonium. Plutonium has only two uses that I am aware of: bombs, and Nuclear Thermo-electric generators.

And yes I do suspect that the logic was altered to prevent inadvertent and premature disconnects, and given how rushed and poorly executed/documented the test ram conversion on the BOP was, I'd be willing to bet the logic had not been fully tested and debugged either.

But it is my understanding that a section of the casing was ejected from the bottom of the well during the blowout and the casing hanger was lodged in the BOP which would have prevented the rams from closing even if the rams had full hyd. pressure which they did not due to hydraulic leaks from poorly made-up connections. but even so, one side of the rams DID fully extend and lock, the other side however did not.

Why on Earth should Russia help them to get the bomb?

Very unlikely that they changed their politic guideline that is now valid since the early 60ies when the quarrel between Russia and China started about nuclear weapons technology and the Russians declining any information. The Russians would gain nothing in helping them with this stuff. They signed the non-proliferation treaty.

So why?

So I expect another reasoning behind the HEU. (Speculation only).

What about adding a few % of non-weapons grade Pu? This would spoil the produced Pu in the first cycle of reprocessing. If reprocessing in short intervals takes place this will be known from the exhausted gases. Maybe they added some specific tracer to the HEU to get better monitoring data?

Is there anything known about how many loads the Russians supplied?

Pu for weapons has to be extracted after irradiating a few weeks only (other newspaper said a few days?). These articles also said that the Busher reactor is not well suited for producing Pu, they have a heavy water reactor that would be suited much better. Maybe Busher is camouflage only?

RHABE

Rhabe, I have no clue what is going through Russia's collective mind. They tend to play both ends towards the middle. They have as much to fear from a nuclear iran as anyone, but yet they are assisting them in it.

makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

"...Maybe Busher is camouflage only?..."

I think the Iranian effort is active on many parallel levels and alternative venues.

Their strategy to develop nukes was decided in contradiction to the view of Ayatollah Khomeini, the "father" of the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Following the Iran-Iraq war during the nineteen-eighties, a strategy was agreed upon the by the ruling class, to develop a strong rocket-branch in the army and defense industries, and for the coordinated effort to strive for a military nuke capability.

Their strive for achieving nukes was driven by their crisis in that war, threatening to topple the Islamic regime, by the (then) secular Iraqi regime, and fear of Nuclear Israel and Saudia.

Saudia is currently thought to posses pre-made tactical nukes sold to the by Brazil.

The Iranian drive to race for nukes, was lessened by the toppling of Saddam's Iraqi regime, but augmented by the rumors of possible Saudi nukes.

They view (Wahabi Islamic) Saudia their main rivalry in an ancient religious dispute, since they view themselves as the leader of the Shiite Islamic sphere of influence.

For them, nukes are essential for the projection of power in the Islamic world mainly, visa-vie Saudia, Pakistan and Malaysia, not so much for defence, as their original thought was, in the eighties and nineties.

I think their strive for fission devices is more as a paveway for achieving fusion, not yet achieved by an Islamic state or organisation.

Eventually, it's inevitable, unless a radical change of mind is due, in the Arab and Islamic world, about their geopolitical relations with the rest of the world.

It's a deep, disturbing question, about the future of civilised relations between states and religions on earth.

double post, sorry