Iran can produce higher enriched uranium ‘in 2 days’ if US quits nuclear deal – report | World Defense

Iran can produce higher enriched uranium ‘in 2 days’ if US quits nuclear deal – report

Khafee

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Iran can produce higher enriched uranium ‘in 2 days’ if US quits nuclear deal – report
05 Mar, 2018

Iran said on Monday it could produce higher enriched uranium within two days if the US quits a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six major powers, Reuters reported. “If America pulls out of the deal… Iran could resume its 20 percent uranium enrichment in less than 48 hours,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told al-Alam TV. Kamalvandi said the deal is not re-negotiable, as demanded by the United States. The agreement’s European signatories - Germany, Britain and France, as well as Russia and China - are committed to preserving the agreement. Under it, Iran curbed its uranium enrichment to help ensure it was for peaceful purposes only and secured an end to financial sanctions in return.

https://www.rt.com/newsline/420525-iran-enriched-uranium-nuclear/
 

Khafee

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Iran takes aim at ‘extremist’ US and Europe claiming THEY have breached nuclear deal
IRAN’S foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticised what he called Europe’s increasingly “extremist” attitude towards Tehran, adding European leaders’ willingness to appease the Trump administration would have a damaging effect on EU policy.
By Romina McGuinness
Mon, Mar 05, 2018

Mr Zarif said it was both the United States and Europe which had breached the Iran nuclear deal.

Speaking to the reformist newspaper Etemad, Mr Zarif said: “In order to keep the United States in the Iran nuclear deal, European countries are suffering from extremism and this will ultimately harm EU policy.

“All action to satisfy the party that has most violated the terms of the nuclear accord is useless.

“Right now, two groups have violated the nuclear deal: the United States and the Europeans. The Americans because of Washington’s policy and the Europeans because of US policy.

“The Europeans, because of US policy, were unable to meet their commitments, especially in the banking sector. These two groups are therefore not in a position to set conditions for the [only] country that has fully implemented its commitments.”

Mr Zarif is to meet his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian on Monday to discuss Iran’s controversial ballistic missiles programme and hegemonic goals in the Middle East.

Mr Le Drian also hopes to save the nuclear deal, which US President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out from unless his European co-signatories help “fix” the agreement’s “terrible flaws”.

The 2015 accord between six world powers – France, Britain, Russia, China, Germany and the US – lifted debilitating economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear programme. The deal does not address Tehran’s ballistic ambitions.

US sanctions on Iran will resume unless Mr Trump makes good on his threat to issue fresh waivers to suspend them on May 12.

France stressed Mr Le Drian and his team were not travelling to Iran as “Donald Trump’s envoys” or “Iran’s lawyers”, but to discuss their “own concerns”.

France has repeatedly stressed that without an end to ballistic missile tests, Iran would “always be suspected, with reason, of wanting to develop nuclear weapons”.

However, according to the Iranian Student News Agency INSA, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Regional Council, Ali Shamkani, told Mr Le Drian that Tehran’s missile work is “in line with [Iran’s] defensive policy, which poses no threat to any country”.

Earlier on Monday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency cited an Iranian armed forces spokesman as saying that Iran’s missile programme would “continue non-stop” and that foreign powers “had no right to intervene”.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...breach-europe-usa-tehran-mohammad-javad-zarif
 

Nilgiri

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But what about weapons grade uranium (90%+)?

Generally it will take a week incl feedstock enrichment (refer page 18) with today's standard proliferated centrifuge tech... but at cost of power/heat signatures that make the centrifuges an immediate juicy easy target:

https://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/2008aglaser_sgsvol16.pdf

I think Iran (if it takes such decision) will run them slower and more spread out + underground to make them harder targets....all of which takes toll on the production rate. It will be cat and mouse hedging with US + allies in region ability to target cleanly.

The actual amounts produced per year would then depend on how many parallel centrifuge chains you have. How many warheads Iran produces then depends on what level of (proven) warhead design they have...if its just gun type, it will be inefficient. But I would assume Iran has capacity for implosion design.
 

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Iran won't be allowed to enrich uranium unless the world is willing to welcome a nuclear race in the ME region e.g. countries like Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
 

Khafee

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But what about weapons grade uranium (90%+)?

Generally it will take a week incl feedstock enrichment (refer page 18) with today's standard proliferated centrifuge tech... but at cost of power/heat signatures that make the centrifuges an immediate juicy easy target:

https://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/2008aglaser_sgsvol16.pdf

I think Iran (if it takes such decision) will run them slower and more spread out + underground to make them harder targets....all of which takes toll on the production rate. It will be cat and mouse hedging with US + allies in region ability to target cleanly.

The actual amounts produced per year would then depend on how many parallel centrifuge chains you have. How many warheads Iran produces then depends on what level of (proven) warhead design they have...if its just gun type, it will be inefficient. But I would assume Iran has capacity for implosion design.

Hypothesize a little - you are very close my friend!
 

Nilgiri

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Hypothesize a little - you are very close my friend!

Has some useful info:

https://breakingdefense.com/2012/08/iran-churning-out-very-enriched-uranium-says-uns-iaea/

https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable

I remember a talk by a nuclear physicist who actually presented some of Saddam Hussein regime implosion designs (captured by US forces in gulf war 2.0)...which were done/acquired back in the mid 90s (the design was sound, but problem for Iraq was production of the WEU, given they did not have gas centrifuge tech, but rather bulky+slow+expensive oak ridge era calutrons). So I would imagine some implosion design is accessible to Iran (and definitely it has the industrial capacity to manufacture to the tolerances needed)...one that uses around 16 kg of WEU as the article suggests.

You can use even less (I will post later from a post i made in another forum long time back that talked about this in detail)., but then the design strays further from being proven etc (and means you risk chance of wasting the weapon altogether)...given improvements generally are structured on an original standard "simple" design you tested and use for reference.

Using its 20% feedstock and other enriched uranium stockpiles (like 3.5% etc)...I think Iran can produce one weapon in a couple months using around 10k centrifuges it has in operation (for peaceful, monitored purposes) at a rate that has optimsed time but also protection from easy foreign targetting....but essentially having to use all of them. If they are all in Natanz facility, moving this whole facility to a secret/more protected location is also quite a task I would imagine...especially with enemy remote sensing/intelligence watching closely.

Trying to producing more (new centrifuges + facilities) will send clear markers given those logistics required...and the command and control needed for those, that now the US+allies have a good idea about. Information on any centrifuges hidden/stashed away etc (given those Iran had to disassemble and then put others under monitoring under the deal), what level of tech they encompass (simple reverse engineering of current IR-1/IR-2 etc or something more advanced or more simple) of course is unknown in public domain....the top intelligence agencies might have some info on it....in fact its probably some of the most important info they are holding and studying right now.

@Joe Shearer @jbgt90 @The Sandman
 
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Scorpion

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Its easy to enrich but not easy to make the bomb.
 
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