Iran continues to prep Natanz

Last week, Iran moved one container of uranium hexafluoride gas from its uranium conversion facility located in Esfahan to its uranium enrichment facility located in Natanz. The container is holding approximately 9,000 kilogram gas.

In theory, nine tonnes of hexafluoride gas could produce up to 45 kilogram of 94 per cent enriched uranium metal. However, this would require that an infinite amount of separative work is invested into the product. In order to produce approximately one significant quantity of the metal, the amount of uranium-235 in the waste stream cannot exceed 0.35 per cent. However, at such a configuration, the Iranians would need to invest approximately 4,438 separative work units into the product and, at current enrichment capacity, it would take them at least 6 years and 9 months to process the nine tonnes and get enough enriched product for one weapon (and that’s assuming that the plant is working at optimum effectiveness). It is more likely that it would take twice as long.

One way to reduce the amount of time necessary to get to that weapon is, naturally, to install more capacity at the enrichment plant. This is something Iran has announced that they will do. Mr. Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, has reportedly said that his organization is capable of installing one cascade (or 164 centrifuges) per week. Given the AEOI’s past achievements, this figure seems quite inflated, but if the organization manages to keep it, Iran could have some 3,000 centrifuges installed by June 2007.

In the meanwhile, Mr. Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council seem to believe that the European Union is willing to negotiate on the basis that Iran is allowed to enrich uranium up to civilian grade. Mr. Larijani is meeting with Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, today.

Mr. ElBaradei recently argued that Iran now have learned so much from its pilot programme that it would be impossible to turn the clock back. In his view, ‘there's a big difference between acquiring the knowledge for enrichment and developing a bomb’. While this is true, most experts would probably say that once a state has aquired that knowledge, making the bomb is easy. Agency safeguards, while perfectly capable of detecting a diversion of materials from a plant, cannot stop a state from proliferating. Safeguards are a burglar alarm, not a lock. As long as Iran’s intention with its nuclear programme remains murky, it would seem unwise to allow the country to produce the stuff that makes nukes.