(Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Olli Heinonen - Iran announced last week that it would start feeding its first IR-8 centrifuges with uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). With more powerful IR-8s and other advanced centrifuges, Iran could enrich uranium for a weapon much faster. The nuclear deal allows testing of more advanced centrifuges. If Iran continues its current rate of testing, the country will be able to field a demonstration plant in three or four years that will have triple the capacity of its currently installed IR-1 centrifuges. With this plant, Iran's breakout time would drop from one year to three or four months. The kind of enriched uranium production output Tehran aims to have is both unwarranted and excessive. The international market has an oversupply of both uranium and enrichment services - meaning that Iran could purchase enriched uranium more cheaply than it can produce it domestically. The writer is the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its Department of Safeguards.
2017-01-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive