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Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis
News Analysis, William O. Beeman and Thomas Stauffer
01/29/06 "Pacific
News Service" -- -- President Bush declared on
June 25 that "we will not tolerate" a nuclear armed Iran. His
words are empty. The physical evidence for a nuclear weapons
program in Iran simply does not exist.
Iran is building a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr
with Russian help. The existence of the site is common
knowledge. It has been under construction for more than three
decades, since before the founding of the Islamic Republic in
1979.
Two other nuclear research facilities, now under development,
have come to light: a uranium enrichment plant in the city of
Natanz and a deuterium ("heavy water") facility in the city of
Arak. Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is
whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the
manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short
answer is: They do not.
The Bushehr plant is only part of the argument that Iran is
embarked on a nuclear weapons program, but it is the part that
can readily be analyzed. State Department accusations of
dangerous Iranian intentions for the Natanz and Arak facilities
are based on a patchwork of untestable, murky assertions from
dubious sources, including the People's Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen-e
Khalq, MEK or MKO), which the United States identifies as a
terrorist organization. These sources assert that there are
centrifuges for enriching uranium (an alternative to fissile
plutonium for bombs) or covert facilities for extracting
plutonium. Neither of these claims are especially credible,
since the sources are either unidentified or are the same
channels which disseminated the stories about Iraq's
non-conventional weapons or the so-called chemical and
biological weapons plant in Khartoum.
The testable part of the claim -- that the Bushehr reactor is a
proliferation threat -- is demonstrably false. There are several
reasons, some technical, some institutional.
--The Iranian reactor yields the wrong kind of plutonium for
making bombs.
--The spent fuel pins in the Iranian reactor would, in any case,
be too dangerous to handle for weapons manufacture.
--Any attempt to divert fuel from the Iranian plant will be
detectable.
--The Russian partners in the Bushehr project have stipulated
that the fuel pins must be returned to Russia, as has been their
practice worldwide for other export reactors.
Just as there are many different kinds of nuclear reactors,
there are different forms of plutonium, distinctions that are
almost never made in public discussions of nuclear
proliferation.
There are two different kinds of reactors, heavy-water or
graphite-moderated reactors; and pressurized, or "light water"
reactors (PWRs). The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel is an
example of the former. The Bushehr plant is the latter.
The Israeli plant is ideal for yielding the desirable isotope of
Plutonium (Pu 239) necessary for making bombs. The Iranian plant
will produce plutonium, but the wrong kind. It will produce the
heavier isotopes, Pu240, Pu241 and Pu242 -- almost impossible to
use in making bombs.
Crucial to extracting weapons-grade plutonium is the type of
reactor and the mode in which it is operated. The Israeli-type
plant can be refueled "on line," without shutting down. Thus,
high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously.
In the Iranian plant, the entire reactor will have to be shut
down -- a step that cannot be concealed from satellites,
airplanes and other sources -- in order to permit the extraction
of even a single fuel pin.
In the Israeli reactor, the fuel is recycled every few weeks, or
at most every couple of months. This maximizes the yield of the
highest-quality, weapons-grade plutonium. In the Iranian-type
reactor, the core is exchanged only every 30-40 months -- the
longer the fuel cycle, the better for the production of power.
For the Iranian reactor at Bushehr, any effort to divert fuel
will be transparent because a shutdown will be immediately
noticeable. No case of production of bomb-grade material from
fuel from an Iranian-type plant has ever been reported.
No one can read the collective mind of a government. But even if
Iran proves in the future to have ambitions for developing
nuclear weapons, any actual production is years, perhaps decades
away. Furthermore, Iran has fully acquiesced to the
international inspections process. Iran is a signatory to the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). On June 22, the head of
the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh,
reiterated that all of Iran's nuclear facilities are open for
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in
compliance with treaty guarantees.
Stauffer is a former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle
Eastern energy economics. Beeman (
William_beeman@brown.edu ) is
director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. Each has
conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years.
Copyright © 2004 Pacific News Service
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