The IR-40 and Diplomacy

Because neither side has disclosed details, we don’t know for sure whether the roadmap Iran proposed to the P5+1 powers in Geneva in mid-October includes the future of the IR-40 reactor project. Iran’s counterparts have good reason to make sure that the unfinished IR-40 is on a short list of must-resolve issues. Once it is completed, Iran will have an installation which can generate annually in its irradiated fuel between 5 and 10 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium. That’s enough for one nuclear weapon a year.

 

Iran has stopped enriching uranium to 20 percent, one of the key demands of world powers in talks over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, a senior Iranian parliamentarian was quoted as saying. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which regularly inspects Iranian nuclear sites, said it had no comment for now. Diplomats from member states accredited to the IAEA said they were not aware of any cessation of higher-level enrichment.

 

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) announced Wednesday that the Islamic republic has plans to construct new nuclear power plants on the Persian Gulf coast, Press TV reported.

 

Speaking last month at a forum at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, Li Bin, a Chinese arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believed that North Korea had detonated a miniaturized nuclear device in its first test.

 

The chief nuclear envoys from China and Russia held talks earlier this week during which they discussed ways to resume the long-stalled multilateral talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, China's foreign ministry said Wednesday.

 

The government is discussing a radical overhaul of the nuclear power sector that would combine the nation’s 50 operating reactors into a single company to rebuild an industry that’s been effectively halted by the Fukushima disaster that started in March 2011.