Posted on 10/05/2009 7:25:41 AM PDT by VRWCTexan
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that a plan for his country to help enrich uranium for an Iranian reactor has yet to be finalized....
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said experts will meet in Vienna on October 19 to discuss the deal for Russia to take some of Iran's processed uranium and enrich it. He said Iran would take part.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
It just buys time really. Iran’s uranium would be out of the country for about a year and when it is returned it would be in the form of fuel rods which are not suitable to nuclear weapons material. The problem is, this deal doesnt stop Iran from produced more uranium in the future.
True - and also true that North Korea took their supply of “fuel rods” and converted those into weapons
The deal was finalized on Friday. If the Russians don't do the enriching, the French were ready to step in.
With American approval.
We built the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) in 1967 and we supplied it with 19.75% low enriched uranium (LEU) until 1992 when Argentina took over. Their LEU is now worn out.
The TRR's LEU produces medical-use Molybdenum 99 which is a "preservative" for, and decays into, the very short-living Technetium-99m which produces powerful gamma x-rays for medical use.
Iran cannot produce enough Moly 99 and about half is lost during import. If Iran wants another 5 year supply of medical-diagnostic Moly 99 they will have to ship all of their LEU (1508 kg @ 4.4%/UF6) to Russia for a year and get it back as unweaponable fuel rods for TRR. Even that will be about 700 kg short.
Iran is out of yellow cake and this deal effectively guts their nuke program. Iran has not been able to enrich LEU past 4.4% for a number of technical reasons I could go into. They are stuck, we are blocking their access to more yellowcake and they are making the best use of their UF6.
Iran may truly be developing (somehow?) the bomb but we cannot let them or Israel to push their hysterics past us.
North Korea did that to make a plutonium weapon. Its an entirely different process than how nuclear weapons are made from highly enriched uranium.
....however IMHO you are missing the entire point:
Why the H-ll provide Iran with fuel rods that within a matter of months can (and likely will be) converted in plutonium based weapons
Reports indicate that the Russian built Bushehr power plant - once operating in 2010 - would generate enough plutonium for up to 12 to 16 weapons PER YEAR
Thus making all the current international fuss and hand-wringing about refining low-grade uranium totally meaningless
Their uranium is highly contaminated with molybdenum hexafluoride (MoF6). So?
We stopped the Chinese from finishing the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), near Esfahan, that would have "filtered" out the MoF6.
MoF6 has nearly the same weight and size as uranium hexafluoride UF6 (weapons grade uranium). As their centrifuges spin at 80k+ rpm, the MoF6 gets into the cascade tubing and plugs it up. That imbalances the centrifuge and it tears itself apart before the lab techs can slow down the centrifuge.
Centrifuges are so touchy that the oil residue from a wiped-off fingerprint will tear them apart.
It does not matter that they have the 50,000 centifuges they are building, or that they know how to build a bomb. They have only gone from 3.5% purity to maybe 4.4% in a year, and they are stuck at that. They have to get to 90% for a bomb small enough for a rocket.
In fact, now Russia will need a year to filter out the MoF6 from Iran's LEU before they can enrich and make fuel rods for Iran.
The Bushehr reactor already has fuel. The Russians finished delivering fuel to it in Jan 2008. The final test run in Bushehr is actually due to happen in the next few days.
Iran could continue to import all the Moly 99 they need for about $1 million a year. That's nothing, why not do that? Why give up all that uranium, that cost the Iranians hundreds of millions to enrich to 4.4%?
Because Iran is stuck at 4.4% LEU, per my previous post and need much more knowledge and time to get the "lead" (MoF6) out of their UF4 in order to convert it into UF6.
There is also a political problem in Iran = hardliners (Ahmadinejad) vs. moderates (Rafsanjani). If Iran keeps the uranium, they will, verrrrry slowly, get weapons-grade uranium. The Mullahs know that the hardliners, led by the Revolutionary Guards, will contol the nukes and take over and radicalize the government and the entire Middle East. That whole Hidden Imam, Armageddon thing.
The Mullahs are barely in control now and they know that actual nukes will cause an internal revolution in Iran.
Besides, Iran has focussed on a uranium bomb, a totally different weapon.
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