The other day, I posted a picture of an Iranian give-away at the IAEA General Conference — a laser-pointer shaped like a centrifuge.
Another reader, who also must remain anonymous, sent along this image of the booth. Gosh, that’s a heck of an IR-1 model.
You don’t see URENCO with those sorts of displays. Just saying.
A Complete Stranger | October 20, 2011
That’s because URENCO wants to maintain the image of a highly competitive provider of enrichment services while they are only marginally so (their capital costs appear to be WAY higher than TENEX’s). Nothing is as secretive as the cost of producing a kg of LEU.
Nick | October 20, 2011
Let’s hope those two guys have a good life insurance.
InsiderThreat | October 20, 2011
Thank God for models: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_1Heq9DM68
Andrew Tubbiolo | October 20, 2011
…Out of left field…. Looks like VLC (An open source media player.) on the flat screen to the left. Are the Iranians running Linux?
Smith | October 20, 2011
VLC is cross-platform, so the presence of VLC is not indicative of a particular operating system.
Andrew Tubbiolo | October 21, 2011
Ah, good point. I did not know that. When I dabble in my machine tool hobby I notice that a lot of modern industrial equipment runs on top of the Windows OS. Older equipment I see runs on industrial real time OS’ such as QNX or VXWorks. On my network I run a minimal application of Windows in order to avoid exposure to malware. And I run my garage industrial equipment off Linux EMC2. What OS do malware such as STUXNET attack or exploit? Before Mr Smith pointed out that VLC can run on Windows as well, the gist of my observation was that maybe the Iranians are avoiding Windows as well, having saving suffered an attack. Sorry if this is off topic.
kme | October 22, 2011
Stuxnet is Windows malware, specifically targetted against Siemens industrial control software.
krepon | October 21, 2011
Subtle.
blowback | October 22, 2011
Since the Iranian government is highly rational, there must be a reason that the “model” is placed in such insignificant out-of-the-way position. Is the message here, “IR-1s are history, we have something far better, suckas!”?
Or was it just brought over to Austria so that the P3+1s “representatives” could check out the quality of the machining as it went through customs?