- (Gatestone Institute)- German nuclear weapons expert Hans Ruhle, who headed the German Defense Ministry's policy planning staff during the 1980s, warned in Die Welt on May 21 that Iran can enrich uranium using laser technology that is much harder to detect than centrifuges. "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in 2010 the 'good nuclear news' that Iran then possessed laser technology for uranium enrichment....The new technological option... suggests that Iran's voluntary restraint on enrichment is an attempt at diversion," Ruhle wrote. "By the estimate of Australia's leading expert, laser enrichment is sixteen times more efficient than earlier enrichment technologies." But the major nuclear powers had little incentive to invest in a new technology, he argues, because their centrifuge installations could enrich uranium at comparatively low cost. Iran may have acquired laser enrichment technology from Russia. Ruhle argues "that in the spring of 2000, America's spy services discovered a pilot program for laser enrichment between Iran and the D.V.-Efremov Institute in St. Petersburg. If Iran has acquired this technology, it can enrich uranium far more cheaply and quickly, in inconspicuous facilities that are far harder to detect than centrifuge installations, Ruhle warns.
2012-06-07 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive