@@ Is Iran building nukes? an analysis @@
- From: "Arash" <A7000@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 18:18:12 -0500
Pacific News Service (PNS)
January 29, 2006
Is Iran Building Nukes? An Analysis
By Dr. William O. Beeman & Dr.Thomas Stauffer
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 1000-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/MKO/NCR
http://www.iran-interlink.org), which the United States identifies as a terrorist
organization.
These MEK/MKO/NCR 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 (PWR).
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.
* Dr. Thomas Stauffer is a former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle Eastern
energy economics. He is the author of over a hundred articles dealing with the oil
industry and the Middle East. He has served as a consultant for a broad range of
governments, international organizations and private firms -- in recent years, he has
been involved in assessing oil fields and oil pipelines projects in Central Asia. Dr.
Stauffer taught energy economics and economics of the Middle East at Harvard
University, the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna and at Georgetown University?s School of
Foreign Service. He has also lectured at several U.S. War Colleges and at the
Department of State. http://www.spongobongo.com/zy9824.htm
* Professor William Beeman is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University
(http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/Beeman.html). Each has conducted
research in Iran for more than 30 years.
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=1b68abecee07b0cb8cf9ed0bc9de5954
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