Iran’s Path to Nuclear Peace
By SIEGFRIED S. HECKER and WILLIAM J. PERRY, NYT
JAN. 9, 2014
Stanford, Calif. — As Iranian and Western diplomats continue to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, the details will matter more and more. Obstinacy and obfuscation will return the two sides to deadlock. But there is hope for the long term if Iran and America are willing to break with the past.
Iran has very little to show for its 50 years of nuclear pursuit. It has only one commercial reactor ready for electricity production at Bushehr that was supplied by Russia without Iran learning much about the technologies needed for the manufacturing and construction of reactors. The country also has an aging 1960s-era American-supplied research reactor on its last legs of medical isotope production.
The heavy-water reactor Iran is building at Arak, ostensibly for medical isotope production, remains a major hurdle in negotiations. The current reactor design appears much better suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium than for civilian uses — and if producing plutonium were the goal, it would take several years for such production.
Iran’s pride and joy, its uranium centrifuge program, can enrich in one year as much uranium as the European consortium, Urenco, can produce in about five hours. A ten-fold increase in Iran’s centrifuge capacity would be required to enrich enough uranium fuel for its Bushehr reactor alone. And no matter how many more centrifuges Iran installs, it can never become self-sufficient because it does not possess adequate uranium ore reserves for a large-scale nuclear energy program. It could purchase enrichment services on the global marketplace just as it would have to buy the natural uranium to feed into the centrifuges.
(More here.)
JAN. 9, 2014
Stanford, Calif. — As Iranian and Western diplomats continue to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, the details will matter more and more. Obstinacy and obfuscation will return the two sides to deadlock. But there is hope for the long term if Iran and America are willing to break with the past.
Iran has very little to show for its 50 years of nuclear pursuit. It has only one commercial reactor ready for electricity production at Bushehr that was supplied by Russia without Iran learning much about the technologies needed for the manufacturing and construction of reactors. The country also has an aging 1960s-era American-supplied research reactor on its last legs of medical isotope production.
The heavy-water reactor Iran is building at Arak, ostensibly for medical isotope production, remains a major hurdle in negotiations. The current reactor design appears much better suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium than for civilian uses — and if producing plutonium were the goal, it would take several years for such production.
Iran’s pride and joy, its uranium centrifuge program, can enrich in one year as much uranium as the European consortium, Urenco, can produce in about five hours. A ten-fold increase in Iran’s centrifuge capacity would be required to enrich enough uranium fuel for its Bushehr reactor alone. And no matter how many more centrifuges Iran installs, it can never become self-sufficient because it does not possess adequate uranium ore reserves for a large-scale nuclear energy program. It could purchase enrichment services on the global marketplace just as it would have to buy the natural uranium to feed into the centrifuges.
(More here.)
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