So after the IAEA Board voted 25-3 to censor Iran over it's nuclear program and after Iran has threatened to bar IAEA inspectors from it's soil, A Jad has upped the ante by stating his country will enrich uranium to 20%. What does that mean exactly? Well, if successful, they will be one short step away from having weapons grade uranium.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Wednesday that his nation would produce a higher grade of nuclear fuel on its own, escalating its war of words with the international community over its disputed nuclear program.
Iran's Nuclear ProgramHis declaration continued a daily drumbeat of defiant proclamations from the Iranian leadership, which has vowed to expand its nuclear plants and hone its capability to enrich uranium despite strong warnings from the United Nations and Western powers that its program violates its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
I declare here that, with the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent fuel and anything it needs itself, Mr. Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd in the central city of Isfahan, according to the Reuters news agency.
20% is actually a level that can be used in a bomb, albeit a very heavy one. But that's not the worry according to experts.
Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said Iran would need more uranium that it currently possesses to make a bomb whose fuel was enriched to only 20 percent.
"That’s not the risk," he said. The risk is that it would be relatively easy for Iran to further enrich that material to something that is usable in a nuclear weapon.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In the Times article, Mr. Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, says the enrichment plant at Natanz could be converted to accomplish 20% enrichment within a month or two and would need another month or two to make enough of it to power the Tehran Research Reactor - which makes medical isotopes for treating diseases. But another worry, he claims, is that while Iran has the know how to enrich uranium to 20%, they lack the expertise for turning it into safe reactor fuel.
He calls the whole situation "unnerving".
Other experts agree that once you enrich uranium to 20% it's but a small step to reach 90% or weapons grade.
The reason for western concern is this: Iran currently takes uranium hexafluoride gas, enriched to 0.7 per cent purity, and converts it to around 4 per cent, the level needed for nuclear reactor fuel. If Iran jumps from 4 per cent to an enrichment level of 20 per cent, it would still, on the face of it, appear to be well below the level needed to manufacture weapons grade uranium, which is of 90 per cent purity.
However, Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear weapons expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says: A jump to 20 per cent actually puts you on the verge of getting weapons grade uranium. This is because the higher up the uranium enrichment level you go, the less technical effort is needed to make the additional incremental steps to get to 90 per cent.
http://www.ft.com/...
A western diplomat who follows the Iran nuclear file agrees. "The jump from 0.7 per cent to 4 per cent," he says, "is much more difficult in technical terms than the jump from 4 per cent to 20 per cent, which itself is more difficult than the jump from 20 per cent to 90 per cent."
http://blogs.ft.com/...
On the heels of this news comes word that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization has set up a detection site near the Iranian border.
Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A United Nations group seeking to outlaw nuclear-weapons tests has set up a detection facility near the border between Iran and Turkmenistan that can register the shockwaves of an atomic blast.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization built seismic station PS44 near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, a "few kilometers" from the Central Asian country’s southern border with Iran, the Vienna-based group said yesterday in a statement on its Web site. The site adds to the group’s 337 stations worldwide designed to detect seismic activity and atmospheric radiation caused by nuclear explosions.
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There have been more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions worldwide since the Manhattan Project’s Trinity trial in the U.S. in July 1945. The last detonation occurred May 25, when North Korea said it conducted a test, an event that was detected at 61 of the UN organization’s seismic stations.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
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