IranIran developing plutonium-based nuke capability
While the world is focusing on Iran’s enriched-uranium nuclear weapons program, evidence has emerged to show that Iran has embarked on a project to make plutonium-based nuclear weapons. This plutonium weapon project is taking place at a facility from which IAEA inspectors have been barred for eighteen months now. Detailed satellite images show that Iran last month has activated the Arak heavy-water production plant, located 150 miles south-west of Tehran. Satellite images of the area around the Arak facility show that numerous anti-aircraft missile and artillery batteries protect the plant — more such missile batteries than are deployed around any other known nuclear site in Iran.
Over the last decade, tensions between Iran and the international community revolved around Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons based on enriched uranium.
New reports suggest that, more recently, Iran has also embarked on a project which would allow it to build nuclear weapons made of plutonium.
The Telegraph reports that this plutonium weapon project is taking place at a facility from which IAEA inspectors have been barred for eighteen months now.
Detailed satellite images show that Iran last month has activated the Arak heavy-water production plant, located 150 miles south-west of Tehran.
Weapon-grade plutonium is extracted in a separation plant from spent uranium rods, and heavy water is used in operating a nuclear reactor that can produce plutonium.
The revelations about Iran’s plutonium bomb project come against the backdrop of yet another round of talks between Iran and six world powers, held Monday and Tuesday in Kazakhstan. The P5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) offered Iran a relaxation of economic sanctions in exchange for reduced concessions from Iran – reduced, that is, relative the demands previously made by the P5+1.
The new proposals would:
- Only temporarily to halt, not abandon altogether, uranium enrichment activities at the underground facility at Fodrow
- Allow Iran to keep uranium it has already enriched to 20 percent, rather than ship all of its 20 percent-enriched uranium out of the country
- Demand that the intervals between one IAEA inspectors’ visit to some of Iran’s nuclear facilities be shortened
In exchange, the P5+1 offered Iran:
- Relaxation of some of the economic sanctions now imposed on the country
- No new economic sanctions
- Relaxations of sanctions involving trading in gold and petrochemical products
- Relaxation of some sanctions on Iranian banks
- There will be relaxation of the EU’s oil trading sanctions on Iran
The new information about Iran’s plutonium bomb project indicates that Iran is preparing an alternative to its uranium bomb program. Iran may agree to slow down somewhat its march toward acquiring uranium-based nuclear weapons in order to lessen the onerous burden of the economic sanctions on the country – bu, at the same time, Iran appears to be embarking on a crash program to build plutonium-base weapons.
The Telegraph notes that images of the area around the Arak facility show that numerous anti-aircraft missile and artillery sites protect the plant — more such missile batteries than are deployed around any other known nuclear site in Iran.
The Arak facility consists of two parts: the heavy-water plant and a nuclear reactor. While the heavy-water plant has been closed to inspectors, the reactor has been opened to IAEA inspections.
Iran informed the IAEA that the Arak reactor will begin operation in the first three months of 2014.
Western intelligence services say there is no information that Iran has yet built a separation plant to reprocess plutonium and use it for a weapon.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. State Department official at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Telegraph that Arak could be part of a process that might trigger Western strikes on Iran.
One option for the Iranian regime would be to acquire the necessary reprocessing technology from North Korea, he said. “By then, the option of a military strike on an operating reactor would present enormous complications because of the radiation that would be spread,” he said.
“Some think Israel’s red line for military action is before Arak comes online.”
The satellite images obtained by the Telegraph were analyzed by Stuart Ray of McKenzie Intelligence Services, a consultancy firm. He said: “The steam indicates that the heavy-water plant is operational and the extent of the air defense emplacements around the site make it suspicious.”
The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security, if the heavy-water plant reaches full capacity, it would produce about 20lb of plutonium a year. That could be enough for two nuclear warheads if the plutonium was reprocessed.
