LFTC - IRAN: Nukes Ahoy!

As Supreme guide Ali Khameini promises to "stun" the West on Thursday's 31st anniversary of the IRANIAN ISLAMIC REVOLUTION, the New York Times reports that Iran is going forward with its own uranium enrichment plans, enriching beyond commercial to medical grade.  Fox News reporter Amy Kellog cited an expert source saying that Iran lacks to technology to package medical-grade uranium into a form (fuel rods) usable for medical research.  Commercial grade fuel is 3 to 5 percent enriched; medical grade is 19.75 percent enriched.  But contrary to popular legend, weapons-grade fuel is not needed for a nuclear explosion....

The normal threshold for minimum weapons grade uranium is usually given as 20 percent, which would put the Iranian program theoretically below officially-recognized weapons suitability by 0.25 percent.  (Here is an online report that says the 20 percent enrichment level "formally" signifies weapons-grade uranium.)

Except that it IS possible to detonate a weapon below 20 percent uranium enrichment level.

The late Theodore B. Taylor, a top US nuclear bomb designer, is my source for saying that a detonation below the 20 percent weapons-grade traditional minimum benchmark is possible:

"The 20 percent enrichment threshold which is presently used by the AEC for physical protection is rather arbitrary, since fast critical assemblies can be made with uranium enriched somewhat below 20 percent, though not as low as the 3 to 5 percent enrichment level used for LWR fuel."

Source: Theodore B. Taylor & Mason Willrich, Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards (1974), p. 129.  Taylor was a top nuclear bomb designer, source for John McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy (1974).

It should also be noted that at 20 percent enrichment--about 70 percent of the work towards full weapons-grade uranium (90 percent or more)--actually is then already done.

Meanwhile, if Iran's added uranium enrichment announcement, coming before Thursday, us not the stunner we are promised, what is?  Announcement of a successful bomb test?

Bottom Line.  Of course, I do not suggest that Iran would settle for such a crude device.  Far more likely they would take the few weeks/months needed to create full weapons-grade fuel.  This is especially the case if Iran plans to use a missile to deliver the payload, as then miniaturization is essential.  Yet Iran already has been caught with a two-stage weapon design sketch, hardly a crude device.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy, UN