Since you’re probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue: It reported that Iran’s supply of low-enriched uranium — the potential feedstock for nuclear bombs — appears to have certain “impurities” that “could cause centrifuges to fail” if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade.
Now that’s interesting. The seeming breakthrough in negotiations on Oct. 1 in Geneva — where Iran agreed to send most of its estimated 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment — may not have been exactly what it appeared. Iran may have had no alternative but to seek foreign help in enrichment because its own centrifuges wouldn’t work.
“The impurities, certain metallic fluoride compounds, would interfere with centrifuge enrichment” at Iran’s facility at Natanz, reported the newsletter’s Bonn correspondent, Mark Hibbs.
This news strikes me as a potential bombshell. If the Nucleonics Week report is accurate (and there’s some uncertainty among experts about how serious the contamination problem is), the Iranian nuclear program is in much worse shape than most analysts had realized. The contaminated fuel it has produced so far would be all but useless for nuclear weapons. To make enough fuel for a bomb, Iran may have to start over — this time avoiding the impurities.
You’ve got to hand it to the Iranians, though, for making the best of what may be a bad situation: In the proposal embraced in Geneva, they have gotten the West to agree to decontaminate fuel that would otherwise be useful only for the low-enriched civilian nuclear power they have always claimed is their only goal.
“It’s especially cheeky for Iran to try to leverage as a concession their willingness to receive international cooperation in supplying nuclear fuel,” noted George Perkovich, the director of the non-proliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Oct. 1 tentative agreement had been hailed because Iran was pledging to send its 3.5 percent LEU, as the low-enriched uranium is known, to Russia where it would be boosted to the 19.75 percent level needed to fuel a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. Under the tentative Geneva agreement, France offered to fabricate the higher-enriched uranium into fuel assemblies.
“The potential advantage of this, if it’s implemented, is that it would significantly reduce Iran’s LEU stockpile, which itself is a source of anxiety in the Middle East and elsewhere,” enthused a senior U.S. official to reporters after the Geneva talks. A further meeting with Iran is set for Vienna Oct. 19 to work out the details.
But hold the cheers, negotiators, and let’s go back to the technical stuff. “If Iran’s uranium feedstock must be decontaminated before it is re-enriched . . . that would suggest that the breakout scenario in Iran does not pose a near-term threat,” Hibbs reported.
Here’s the bottom line: There may be more time on the Iranian nuclear clock than some analysts had feared. The fuel stock they have worked so hard to produce might damage their centrifuges if they try to enrich it into a bomb. Making a deal with Iran to enrich nuclear fuel outside the country makes sense, so long as the international community can monitor where and how it’s used — and whether there’s a secret stash.
