2 posts tagged “iran”

With all the concern about Iran's nuclear program and its potential for nuclear proliferation and war I though I had better start tracking developments more closely in an attempt to cut through the political posturing.

A good article on the history behind Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant and the recent deal to prevent Iran from getting plutonium out of it can be found here.

"On 13 February 2004 a Russian Energy Ministry official said that Iran and Russia might sign the protocol on exporting Russian nuclear fuel to Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant and return of the use fuel to Russia within the next two weeks. The official said "The controversial protocol, that would pave the way for making functional Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant, and Russia`s access to the major part of its money for completing the said plant, would be signed very soon, and no later than a fortnight from now." He emphasized"

The deal was eventually signed February 7, 2005 so there must have been some resistance from Iran.

A listing of all Iran's nuclear facilities built or under construction as of 2003 can be found here. Interestingly only one power plant (Bushehr) is listed.

There remain significant such open question related to Iran's enrichment program. The 26 August 2003 IAEA report provides information making clear Iran has consistently misled the Agency about its enrichment program. First, as paragraph 30 reveals, Iran's centrifuge enrichment program did not begin in 1997, as Iran initially told the Agency, but in 1985,

This New York Times article from Feb 2007 gives a brief history of international inspections of Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program based upon centrifuges.

At first, inspectors from the international atomic agency in Vienna had wide latitude to travel through Iran in an effort to comprehend the depth and breadth of the enrichment project — and assess its true nature, whether for war or peace. They toured centrifuge factories, found a hidden centrifuge factory behind a false wall in a small electric facility in downtown Tehran and hunted for signs of weapons-grade enrichment. They visited the cavernous hall at Natanz, until recently a huge, empty basement.

By the atomic agency’s estimates, Iran could produce upwards of 100 centrifuges a month, and was stockpiling them.

Then, last February (that would be Feb. 2006 , SS), after three years of unusual openness, Iran reacted to the growing pressure from Washington and Europe to suspend its enrichment — or face sanctions — by drastically reducing the access of international inspectors to Natanz and dozens of other atomic sites, programs and personnel.

Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program was secret until 2002 according to this article until an opposition group revealed its existence. Until recently Iran tended to downplay its commitment to the enrichment process.

The agency has repeatedly asked Iran for information, but Iran has insisted that it abandoned work on the P-2 centrifuge three years ago. Then in April, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Tehran was “presently conducting research” on the P-2 and boasted that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers.

The Iranians seem to be researching pure plutonium which is only used in nuclear bombs and not for power production according to this NY Times article. Plutonium is only produced in a nuclear power plant.

The report also documents a number of contradictions between claims by Iranian authorities and the inspectors' evidence.

An example of the serious discrepancies found by the atomic agency center on Iranian research on plutonium, one of the main fuels of nuclear arms. The report said the agency took a number of Iranian plutonium disks to Vienna for analysis of their makeup.

The investigators found a major disagreement between the disks and what was said to be the solution from which they were made. The analysis revealed that eight of the disks had "significantly lower" amounts of plutonium 240. That finding is important because plutonium 240 is considered a pollutant in the making of nuclear arms, and nuclear engineers work hard to limit its presence.

The report made no link between the plutonium 240 finding and its potential usefulness for making nuclear arms. Rather, in the agency's usual understated style, it simply noted the discrepancy.

"The story is not as straight as it has been presented to us," said a senior official with knowledge of the agency's investigation.

After a short period of shutting down their uranium enrichment program the Iranians broke the U.N. inspector's seals on the equipment in January 2006 according to this article here.

Iran received nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan just like North Korea according to this August 2005 NY Times article.

Dr. Khan publicly confessed in January 2004 to having provided nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but he gave few details. General Musharraf pardoned him, citing his status as a national hero. Pakistani officials are investigating Dr. Khan, but General Musharraf has barred American or United Nations investigators from directly questioning him.

From this initial review of the evidence I think the odds favor the idea that Iran is seeking to develop plutonium nuclear weapons.

The key facts are:

1. Iran does not have plans for a large number of nuclear power plants for the purpose of generating electricity. It is only building one nuclear reactor. So why is it spending tons of money to enrich uranium in a quantities for a whole electrical generation industry for only one nuclear plant?
   
2. The uranium enrichment program began in 1985 during the Iran - Iraq war meaning that it was started as a military program and then never completely stopped.
3. The Iranian uranium enrichment program only re-started again in January 2006 after the Russians refused to allow Iran to get plutonium from the spent fuel of their one nuclear reactor (in February 2005).  Even only enriching uranium to fuel levels will allow Iran to fuel their own nuclear power plant and that will get them the plutonium which is need to make lightweight nuclear bombs suitable for placement on missiles. See this link and this link for nuclear bomb information.

350 kiloton MOHAWK Nuclear Bomb Test - 1956

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Perhaps the most compelling reason why Shiite Iran should not develop nuclear weapons and why Iran should realize that going down that road is not in its best interest is the high probability of an accidental nuclear war between Iran and its neighbors. That other nations beyond Israel would become involved is evidenced by the sudden interest Sunni Arab states have in acquiring nuclear power plants in order to gain some national expertise in the area. This New York Times article explains it well.

During the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States the time for land based nuclear missiles to reach each nation was a half hour when flying over the North Pole. This gave each side some time to double check for errors. The flight time of a missile between Israel and Iran or a Sunni Arab nation and Iran is about 10 minutes which leaves very little time for double checking early warning data.

Some examples of such false alarms is very illustrative of what can happen

The most recent big scare occurred in January 1995 when Russian radars detected a missile launch out of the Norwegian Sea not giving them much time to decide even though thus was the time of Boris Yeltsin and warm relations between the two nations. The Russians came very close to launching, a fact which scared the U.S. enough so that the U.S. paid for some Russian early warning improvements.

See the CNN article Nuclear Close Calls and this one from the San Francisco Chronical.

The most complete listing of known nuclear false alarms can be found here. Most of these are from the U.S. records. The true amount of Soviet era false alarms may never be known although one interesting case is reported here.

Some more information on the scariest incidents can be found in this PBS article.