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It's Time to Call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Bluff

IN THIS ISSUE: US should call Iran's bluff, Tokyo radiation level not tied to plant, UK nuclear must comply or face shutdown, French firm wins license for Idaho uranium plant, deficit committee should consider cutting nuclear arms, lawmaker says, 10,000 protesters at Tamil Nadu nuclear plant.

Published on October 13, 2011
 

U.S. Should Call Iran's Bluff

James Acton | Los Angeles Times

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

It's time to call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bluff. Over the last few weeks, the Iranian president has stated on a number of occasions that his country will cease domestic efforts to manufacture fuel for one of its nuclear reactors if it is able to purchase the fuel from abroad. The United States should accept this proposal — publicly, immediately and unconditionally.

Iran's enrichment program has been the focus of international concern for almost a decade. Its first efforts were geared toward enriching uranium to 5% — suitable for use in a power reactor. But, in February 2010, in an ominous development, it started to feed some of this material back into its centrifuges to produce uranium enriched to 20%.

Iran's ostensible purpose for enriching uranium to this higher level was to produce fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor, which uses more highly enriched fuel than a normal power reactor to produce radioactive materials for some cancer treatments. This explanation is, however, hardly plausible. Iran can enrich uranium to 20%, but it lacks the technology to convert this material into reactor fuel (previously it bought fuel from abroad, most recently from Argentina). It is much more likely that Iran is stockpiling 20% enriched uranium to give itself the option of rapidly converting it, at some later date, into the 80% or 90% enriched material needed for a nuclear weapon.     Full Article



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