By Paul Van Olson
October 18, 2007
Washington, D.C. (Crime Library) -Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran this week, the first by a Russian leader since the 1943 Tehran Conference at the height of World War II, began with a declaration in support of the right of Iran and the other states bordering the Caspian Sea to develop peaceful nuclear power programs, signaling the imminent demise of the effort to build consensus among the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the United States—to compel the Islamic Republic of Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program.
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| Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
While the permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany, had agreed on September 28 to table any discussion of further sanctions until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on Iran's clarification of outstanding questions about its nuclear program, Vladimir Putin's statements indicate that any serious tightening of pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions is increasingly unlikely.
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| Iran Uranium Facility |
Putin's public embrace of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday served as an exclamation point to Ahmadinejad's declaration on October 5 that Iran would not negotiate "over its definite and legal nuclear rights," among which Ahmadinejad includes the nuclear enrichment at the center of U.S. concerns about Iran's intentions. With the Natanz enrichment facility now approaching industrial-scale capacity, the great concern of U.S. planners is the possibility that Iran will be permitted by the international community to proceed with full-scale, fuel-grade enrichment on an ongoing basis.
Uranium exists in nature in nearly indistinguishable forms, or isotopes, the most common being U235 and U238, differing only by three neutrons in atomic structure. In nature, both isotopes are found together, typically just under 99.3% the relatively harmless U238, and 0.7% the far less stable U235, which is the key component in both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. While even the less than 1% U235 found naturally in uranium ore is sufficient to cause a self-sustaining nuclear reaction when refined, sufficient reactivity to permit generation of useful amounts of energy requires a concentration of U235 at more than triple the natural concentration, and nuclear weapons require concentrations of 90% U235. Nuclear enrichment is the process by which the significant U235 is separated from the less useful but nearly identical U238. The process Iran is developing at its facility at Natanz relies on the slight difference in mass between the two isotopes to separate them by passing uranium hexafluoride, a gas, through a series of rapidly spinning centrifuges, separating the isotopes because of the slightly greater momentum of the heavier U238.
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| IAEA Seal |
The problem for those concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions is that the difference between enrichment for energy generation in a nuclear power plant and enrichment for weapons use is strictly one of degree, not one of kind. Since the enrichment process is a process of concentration, increasing the starting concentration geometrically affects the efficiency and speed of the process. Approximately two-thirds of the processing required for weapons-grade concentration is accomplished by processing uranium from its natural concentration to the 3% concentration typical for nuclear power.
PICTURE5
Experts calculate that if Iran, with the 3,000 centrifuges known to be at Natanz were operated full-tilt for weapons-grade enrichment, Iran could generate sufficient weapons-grade uranium for an atomic bomb similar to the one used by the U.S. on Hiroshima in 12 to 18 months. While this is worrisome to contemplate, IAEA inspectors report that the centrifuges are not working at full efficiency, and IAEA safeguards which Iran has accepted to date currently allow the IAEA to monitor the enrichment of products removed from the cascades. If Iran launched an immediate attempt at Natanz to process enough U235 to construct a nuclear weapon, that attempt would likely be detected by the IAEA months before that weapon would be completed, permitting either international or multinational response in time to prevent it.
More likely, and more troublesome, is the prospect of Iran emulating North Korea in what some have called a "soft breakout" from the Nonproliferation Treaty and the IAEA safeguards. Under this scenario, Iran would take advantage of the current anti-American sentiment within the UN to thwart additional sanctions and continue, at least temporarily with fuel-grade enrichment. At some later point, though, Iran could, as did North Korea, cite some disagreement with IAEA and expel any inspectors and remove IAEA monitoring equipment. Using the fuel-grade uranium already processed under IAEA auspices, then the Iranian government could complete processing of sufficient weapons-grade uranium for an atomic weapon in as little as two months. Past experience has shown that the international community would be hard pressed to develop any sort of consensus to respond within such a short time, and nations opposed to an Iranian atomic bomb would likely be forced to act independently to prevent it.
This was in essence the path by which North Korea was able to develop the atomic device it tested so dramatically in October 2006. After signing the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1985, North Korea stalled and obstructed inspectors for years before threatening to withdraw from the treaty in 1993. Years of negotiations ensued, with a string of broken promises by the North Koreans and desultory attempts at bilateral and multilateral negotiations, until 2002, when IAEA inspectors were expelled and IAEA safeguards completely collapsed. Fully aware that North Korea, by now, in all likelihood already had an atomic bomb, the U.S. and regional powers then engaged in face-saving negotiations to prevent North Korea from undermining the Nonproliferation Treaty by publicly declaring its possession of such a weapon. Displeased with the direction of the talks, though, North Korea proceeded with a test of a nuclear weapon in 2006, and talks to persuade it to surrender its weapons are still underway.
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