Iran's Smart Concrete Can Cope With Earthquakes and Bombs 609
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs. UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibers. UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures. All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of meters of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs."
Re:Dear americans (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the Slashdot leadership and a good majority of their chickenhawk wannabe-military fanboy readership subscribe to Judeo-Christian beliefs about being in the moral right as nation-builders, but if you're gonna tacitly encourage war with Iran, then enlist, pick up a fuckin' gun, and go shoot yerselves some strangers. See your buddies turned into hamburger and shuttled back into the states to live their lives as disfigured vegetable abominations, and you can become a nonfunctional drug-addicted alcoholic having to cope with those horrors for life. There are laws to reward employers for hiring veterans, but all it takes is one flashback flipout to make even the most patriotic employer reexamine their hiring decisions. Kids can't even afford school because that money went to some glorified security guard being paid $300,000 a year.
If you're gonna go big, then at least do it right - indiscriminately carpet-bomb the entire Middle East, including Israel.
Re:Today's dose of fearmongering... (Score:2, Interesting)
announced it wants to annihilate one of its neighbors and is busy getting nuclear weapons
Ahh, No and No. Iran has never stated it is trying to build nuclear weapons. I hope your not refering to the speach that has been proven long ago to be a "accidental" mistranslation.
Re:Today's dose of fearmongering... (Score:4, Interesting)
2- Iran has not announced it wants to annihilate Israel. It wished for Israeli government to lack existence.
3- Israel has at least 200-300 nukes and can defend itself. No need for crying wolf. Iran will never use nukes against Israel. A single nuke on Tehran will kill 15 million.
Back in 2003 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 2003, an Iranian student, with the help of a professor from Iran, won the first prize in a competition organized by the American Concrete Institute
For more info, look into this page ---> http://www.concrete.org/STUDENTS/st_concreteprojects03_winners.htm [concrete.org]
About the prize winning concrete ?
It has been used for building Iran's underground bunkers, which house Iran's nuclear facilities
Re:Today's dose of fearmongering... (Score:4, Interesting)
doesn't all add up though.
stuxnet made a big dent in their enrichment activities (ie they had to start again because any material they'd made during the affected time would not be viable).
they are apparently working on a high-explosive lens system - that's what IAEA were worried about, that they were looking into making the critical trick to an implosion device.
only problem - enrichment is for uranium, and high-explosive lenses are for plutonium. their one nuke plant is not of the kind that can be used to make pu 239 (which no doubt is why they were allowed to build it).
maybe they're doing what the yanks did and they're working on 2 bombs at once?
Re:Today's dose of fearmongering... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go to the US with a few copies of the Qur'an and see what happens.
The outcome is pretty predictable: Oh, I see you have a Quran. You must be a Muslim? There are millions of them in the US. Have a nice day.
Wow, that is pretty horrible, but not on a par with nations living under Sharia.
Saudi jailed for discussing the Bible [washingtontimes.com]
In Iran, Covert Christian Converts Live With Secrecy and Fear [usnews.com]
Saudi Arabia is not Iran (Score:5, Interesting)
....And what does Saudi Arabia have to do with Iran? They're close allies with the US and enemies with Iran, which happens to have a fair number of native Christians (mostly Armenians and Georgians) as well as Jews and Zoroastrians who actually are allowed to own Bibles and Torahs are allowed exemptions from certain Islamic laws such as the ones on alcohol consumption. Said Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians also have their own guaranteed members of parliament, as set by the Iranian constitution.
I certainly won't sugarcoat the condition of minorities in Iran as paradise, and as an atheist I wouldn't want to live in either country, but Iran is certainly leaps and bounds better than the Saudis in terms of minorities. The Saudis don't even tolerate other sects of Islam, and in fact they destroyed the tomb of Mohammed, as well as other prominent Muslim figures, in the fear that they might turn into objects of worship by Islamic sects that have traditionally venerated at those sites. Bringing up Saudi Arabia as a reason to stop Iran really is a red herring.
Re:Today's dose of fearmongering... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why Iran needs cruise missiles that can hit Israel, and why Israel will have to think twice about hitting Iranian reactors. Previously they could try strike missions against other countries with impunity, but faced with the possibility of retaliatory missiles that are very difficult to defend against they might just be put off.
People keep blaming Iran for escalating the situation in that part of the world, but actually Israel and the US already did and everyone else is just playing catch-up.
Re:Back in 2003 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why people keep parroting this, it's simply not true. It had some validity to it a few years back, but even then the IAEA has always had some concerns.
In recent years though the IAEA's stance if that they've found some evidence that Iran did continue a nuclear weapons programme, and has made it quite clear that Iran is not giving it the access and information it needs to confirm that it is in compliance. Whilst this doesn't mean Iran is not in compliance, it is certainly not the case that it is in compliance - Iran wont let the IAEA confirm that it's compliant, make of that what you will, but I suspect if a country was in compliance there'd be absolutely no reason to not let the IAEA confirm that to be the case. The fact they wont let the IAEA confirm whether they are or are not compliant is a cause for concern in itself and is in itself a breach of the NPT.
A bit of America/Israel bashing is all well and good, god only knows they've done enough to deserve it, but this attitude of defending Iran as an extreme anti-Israeli/US stance is even more absurd. A lot of people here go on about how Iran is an innocent peaceful nation that's never attacked anyone and so forth, but that's also complete rubbish, sure they may not directly declare war but they absolutely do carry out war by proxy (where the proxy is usually groups like Hamas, Hezbollah) and they do carry out clandestine ops. When you point this out people jump in and say "but the US does that too!", sure they do, but that doesn't somehow make it right. Keep in mind that even the staunchly anti-US Russia has in recent years refused to make itself some money selling Iran new military hardware - this is because Russia is concerned that Iran has links to groups in Chechnya and so forth too. The fact is, even if Iran doesn't declare war directly, everyone knows what it gets up to.
So hate Israel/America all you want, god only knows I've had enough of their actions, but to then jump to the extreme of defending Iran is just fucking idiotic. Iran is as much of a problem as Israel is that's for sure, and I'd argue with Iran's destabilisation of Lebanon so they can have their own proxy army on Israel's doorstep, they're worse. The only flip side to it all is that Iran is largely incompetent at this sort of thing, so when their bombers succeed in little more than blowing their own legs off in Asia, it's almost comical, Mossad in contrast gets the job done which, depending on your viewpoint on things either makes them better, worse, or just as bad.
Really, the fundamental reality of the situation is that Iran, Israel, the US and so forth are all as bad as each other. My personal view is that if Israel/US attack Iran then I have little sympathy for Iran, it's a game they chose to play, and when you choose to play a game, you can't really cry when you lose. They still have every opportunity to bow out gracefully.
Re:Back in 2003 ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"If you're doing nothing wrong- you wouldn't mind the police routinely searching your home without a warrant. Or you Sig Other going through your cell phone call list/web history routinely."
But it's not really the same, part of being a signatory to the NPT is you agree to exactly that, and Iran is a signatory to the NPT. You're right I wouldn't like the police doing as you say, but if I'd signed a legally binding document and they asked to do it and told the judge or whoever I wasn't cooperating by letting them then should I really have a leg to stand on when the judge chastises me for not letting them do what I've legally agreed to let them do?
The problem is we're not talking about inspections of just some random person's belongings, we're talking about the most destructive weapons mankind has ever created.
It's worth noting that in some countries the above analogy isn't too unrealistic either, in some countries if you want to keep guns in your house you have to keep them in a secure locker, and as part of being allowed to do that the police can do checks once a year or so, if you prevent them coming to do those checks you lose the right to keep guns in your house.