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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran Completes Secret Uranium Plant
2006-04-21
WASHINGTON -- Just when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thought it had its hands around the Iranian nuclear program, NewsMax has learned from intelligence sources that Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is completing a secret, underground uranium enrichment plant that should begin operating in October 2006. Work on the new plant, located 50 miles outside the northeastern Iranian city of Mashad, was begun with help from Russian engineers in 2003, Iranian intelligence sources said.

The facility has been built 150 meters below ground in a rugged highlands valley some 38 kilometers southeast of the city of Nishabour. The nearest inhabited area is a town named Homa. A large agricultural center was constructed overhead to disguise the existence of the buried plant, the sources said. A similar disguise was initially used to hide the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant to the southwest of Tehran, before a foreign government revealed its existence to the IAEA.

Over the last seven months, according to former Iranian army military analyst Homayoun Moghaddam, now exiled in Europe, scientists and technicians from Belarus and Ukraine have been working on site to prepare the new facility to accommodate 155,000 P1 and P2 uranium enrichment centrifuges. He said the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Department, which is in charge of the facility, refers to it as the Shahid Moradian center, and that 850 Iranian scientists and technicians are currently working there, along with 85 experts from Belarus and Ukraine. Their goal is to enrich enough uranium to build at least nine nuclear weapons per year, and to keep the site secret for the next three years, Moghaddam said.

The IAEA has verified previously clandestine production in Iran of the P1 centrifuge, an older design copied by Pakistan from plans acquired in Europe in the late 1970s by Dr. A.Q. Khan. Iran announced last week that it had successfully begun enrichment of uranium in a cascade of 164 P1 centrifuges at a pilot plant in Natanz, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council statement calling on Iran to cease all enrichment activities by April 28.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also announced last week that Iran was now capable of producing the more advanced P2 centrifuge, which is considered more efficient and more reliable than the older P1 design. Until his announcement, Iranian officials had denied reports that they had imported P2 centrifuges from the A.Q. Khan network and claimed that sample P2 centrifuges found in Iran had been produced experimentally by a private company not working on a government contract. But these latest reports of a completely separate, clandestine enrichment facility near Nishabour, if confirmed, would completely alter the picture the IAEA has constructed of Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

"I would argue that they have a parallel program of some size," said Paul Leventhal, a former U.S. Senate aid and founder of the Nuclear Control Institute, an independent research and advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
Leventhal was debating Iran's nuclear programs on the "NewsHour" program with Jim Lehrer on April 11 before information on the Nishabour facility was made public. "I would also caution against a grand deception by Iran to play into Western perceptions of Iran as being technologically and industrially backward, and apparently having problems in facilities that they're letting the IAEA into, while, at unknown locations, they are proceeding with all the technological help and technology that money can buy," Leventhal added.
Posted by:Steve

#20  Yep, with US milfors on both flanks the Mullahs only available strategic line of retreat is thru Central Asia where the US is already establishing bases. They're being surrounded like Custer -this is why, short of Russo-China military intervention against US-Allies, Iran's only other option is save themselves by striking first, an option which is likely the pragmatic underlying premise of MadMoud and his Divine Apocalypso + asymmetric warfare on ground + threat to use 40,000 suicide bombers in var alleged retaliatory International terror strikes against US, Israel , Britain, and West. The Radical Mullahs = God-/Faith-based Lefties-Marxists-Bolsheviks-Communists-Anarchists are willing enough and manic enough to take the world with them to hell-fire.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2006-04-21 21:00  

#19   think we've found that deep penetration helos aren't the best option for a variety of missions they once were expected to perform.

Ima think that's true of in many heliocopter cases - thinking of the great Apache Raid.
Posted by: 6   2006-04-21 17:26  

#18  Just when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thought it had its hands around the Iranian nuclear program,

ROFL!

I can't believe the guy wrote this with a straight face.
Posted by: Xbalanke   2006-04-21 17:13  

#17  is the idea of using deep penetration helos in Iran nixed?

I think we've found that deep penetration helos aren't the best option for a variety of missions they once were expected to perform.
Posted by: lotp   2006-04-21 15:07  

#16  Did the Tehran Ballet Company dance around with that too?
Posted by: Seafarious   2006-04-21 14:40  

#15  Laser enrichment is still at experimental stage.

The Australian SILEX facility is at prototype stage. This is the only facilty that looks capable of eventual commercial production.

Iran has an experimental laser enrichment facility at Lashkar Ab'ad. It has managed to enrich only milligrams of uranium.

Posted by: john   2006-04-21 14:04  

#14  Speaking of centrifuges, what's the current thinking on the 'Burg about the aluminum cylinders presented by the CIA as centrifuge components?

Using the numbers given in the comments, 60K rpm, 450 m/sec wall speed: that's equivalent to a diameter of 14 cm (5 1/2 inches). So the pictures I've seen look reasonable. I recollect that the tolerances specified exceeded those for 'rocket components'.

It's conventional wisdom at this point that the claim was bogus, but was it?
Posted by: KBK   2006-04-21 14:03  

#13  Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I keep thinking about the work accidents the paleos keep having. Can you imagine the extent of the damage if the high-tech Iranians happen to bump the wrong thing? Here's hoping.
Posted by: BH   2006-04-21 13:31  

#12  OS, It seems to me we may want to set up some very temporary forward base areas to stage airborne on site BDA at various targets to confirm that what we thought was there was, that it did in fact get destroyed and to pick up additional intelligence. Or is the idea of using deep penetration helos in Iran nixed?
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2006-04-21 13:21  

#11  Works for me. Works very well for the Kurds, too. A Caspian Sea port would be helpful. One on the Mediterranean would be even better.
Posted by: Hupolugum Ulath5905   2006-04-21 12:49  

#10  Mashad is hardly a secret, no more than Natanz.

Look around - you'll see that plans for strikes on Iran include the following (by common military sense):

1st: stealth cruise missles in a time-on-target against the early warning radars and communications systems.

2nd: stealth bombers using JDAMs and ARM in Iron-Hand strikes against air defense (SAM) centers, and against military communication centers. Additionally, every main telephone exchange will be taken out, as will radio and television broadcast centers (a single B2 with precision munitions can do this over a huge swath of central Iran).

3rd: Larger bombers (B2's, B1's) take out every power plant in the areas of the centrifuges, and take out power transmission lines across the country as well. "Catastrophic shutdown" if the centrifuges are in use will cause some centrifuges to tear themselves apart. Also taken out will be the political leadership targets and followups on deep targets that require mutliple strikes with penetrating munitions.

4: followups on all targets above by F-16s' F-15E's, and B52's dropping barn loads of guided 500lb bombs - poloticla leadership and military targets (The "elite" units) get hit particulalry hard here, including the destruction of all major fuel and ammunition dumps, and all military port facilities and potential anti-ship missle sites. Likely here would be seizure of disputed and militarized islands in the Gulf near Hormuz (the only ground actions of the war other than SF covert actions).

We've had plans for decades on how to force an entry into Iran from the sea - in the case of a "Soviet" invasion of Iran as part of WW3. So there are target studies, approach routes, landing areas, etc. The big difference is that we have troosp all along the borders with Afghanistan and Iraq - so defensive measures will need to be taken, but it also allows for much easier insertion of clandestine forces as well.

Final result:

Iran's political leadership will be disrupted and possibly decimated or (effectively) destroyed, their military command and control will be severely degraded (if not eliminated), and their nation will be plunged into the 1800's as they lose power generation and transmission capacity, telecommunications capability, and their 20th century infrastructure.

And unlike Iraq, we will NOT be going in on the ground to clean it up. This is a purely punative strike, to eliminate the threat posed by thier political leadership and military's attempts to gain nuclear weapons.

As for the Iranian people? They're on their own. We'll send food and blankets, but not troops.

That means if Europe doesnt step in, between 5-10 million refugess will hit the area, famine and disease will run rampant in Iran (A million or more die within a year due to the collapse of their cities). Iran will be transformed into a large chaotic third world country.

I expect the Kurds will take full advantage of this chaos and the Peshmerga will deploy to do "Peacekeeping" in much of Northern Iran where Kurds are a majority, establishing an "autonomous zone" from which the Iranian military will be excluded. I expect that they will likely NOT suffer any strikes on the infrastructure there, nor on the oil wells and delivery structure in that region. It will be quite a plum for the Kurds to have as they sieze their freedom from the Mullahs.

Works out quite well for the Kurds - they get some oil, land and more of "Greater Kurdistan" becomes independant. They also provide a great spur for the Turks to get involved in the aftermath of the Iran strikes, to keep them from losing the eastern half of Turkey.

And the Russians would love to send "help" across the Caspian, allowing them to steal and operate safeguard the oil infrastructure in that part of Iran.

As for Central Iran, I am sure the Shia in Iraq would love to payback help their Persian Brothers who have been subordinating supporting Shia Arabs under Persian Mullahs for quite a while.

The one thing that most in the west will not expect is that the Gulf Arabs in the South may ask for (and get) protection from the Emirates and other gulf Arab states in the coastal areas, under the protection of the Emirates airforces (while the US take over security of the Emirates airspace to help them).

The Ethnicity of SE Iran is more Arab on the coast, and Pakistani/Pashtun in the eastern tribal areas. They already have a nascent anti-Mullah movement there that is becoming more bold. With proper support from their ethnic brothers across the gulf they could kepe the southern ports open and well goverened. Pakistani troops would be called in as "Peacekeepers" and would fight off the "SS" guards troops of the current regime.

Works out rather well for the Pakistanis - hte get more land, ports and some oil, are seen as heling their fellow tribesmen, and playing "Peacekeeper".

So if we decapitate the Iranian government and military and give the Kurds, Russians, gulf Arabs and Pakistanis a little push in a directiont hey woudl already want to go, Iran will be carved up into many little pieces, with the center impotent and rotting. And it will not be able to fund Syria and Hamas, who will cease to exist in their current form without money and logistical support from Iran.

Which leaves only Saudi Arabia Wahabbists as a problem...

FYI: the sand in the vaseline for all of this is that the CIA has to be competent in planning and leading the horses (Pakistan tribes, gulf Arabs in Iran and on the other side, Kurds, Russians, etc) to the water so they can drink - and having them ready to do this without tipping the US strike time. Right now, with the CIA's focusing on fighting Bush and Director Goss's cleanup of the old-boy net, I dont believe they are effective enough to pull this off. So we'll end up with a huge mess that will be a pain in the region for a decade. Less of a pain than a nuclear armed mullah-ocracy led by a fanatic, but stil one that will probably cause us to fight and win a ground war of liberation (like Iraq - a hard nasty fight) in 5-10 years down the road.
Posted by: Oldspook   2006-04-21 12:37  

#9  John. What ever became of laser enrichment?
Posted by: 3dc   2006-04-21 12:34  

#8  The capacity of a gas centrifuge is measures in separative work units (SWUs). A reasonable estimate is that each centrifuge of the type that Iran is likely to produce (most likely made from carbon fibre) would have a capacity of about 2.5 SWU per year. That this is likely is indicated by the example of Iraq. In 1991, Iraq was a prototype centrifuge with a carbon-fibre rotor spun at up to 60,000 rpm (a wall speed of roughly 450 meters per second). The enrichment capacity during the best test run reached 1.9 SWU per year. IAEA inspectors estimated that an output of 2.7 SWU per year could have eventually been achieved.

A reasonable estimate is that each centrifuge of the type that Iran is likely to produce, the P-1 type, would have a capacity of about 2.5 SWU per year. Iran is experimenting with the P-2 type gas centrifuge (operated by Brazil, Pakistan and India) that may be about twice as efficient, with a capacity of about 5 SWU per year

An Iranian facility containing, say, 3,000 P-1 centrifuges could produce 7,500 SWU per year or about 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium per year. It would take this facility at least 5 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for the nuclear force of six nuclear weapons. With sufficient expertise in HEU-based nuclear weapons 40kg per year could provide 2 nuclear weapons.

A facility operating a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges would use as much energy, electrical power, as a largish city – approximately 200 kilowatt-hours per SWU or roughly 1,000 kilowatt-hours per gram of highly enriched uranium. It would, therefore, be impossible to operate such a facility clandestinely.
Posted by: john   2006-04-21 11:15  

#7  Yep.
Al - Aluminum
MS - Maraging steel
CFRC Carbon Fiber Resin Composites

The first generation Pak-1 centrifuges (a stolen early URENCO design) is subject to material creep at high speeds.
Replacing the Al with Maraging Steel allows higher speeds.
Carbon Fibre allows far better performance.


Posted by: john   2006-04-21 11:01  

#6  Hi John.

Q:

Al means Aluminum? (Presumably something like 2024 or 7xxx series)

CFRC: Carbon-fiber-reinforced ???? (Carbon?)

MS: ??????
Posted by: Phil   2006-04-21 10:55  

#5  


Basic Parameters of Contemporary Centrifuges



Type 	        P1   	P2 	Russia 	URENCO 	US



Rotor Material 	Al 	MS 	CFRC 	CFRC 	CFRC



Speed (m/sec) 	350 	500 	700 	700 	>700



Length (m) 	1-2 	1 	<1 	3-4 	12



kg SWU/yr 	1-3 	5 	10 	40 	300
Posted by: john   2006-04-21 10:39  

#4  Ah, just another clandestine peaceful nuke site, nothing to see here. move along.

Meantime, the Ruskie-commies say they need proof before committing to any punitive actions.

sarc_off
Posted by: Captain America   2006-04-21 10:25  

#3  Take out every electrical generator, water treatment plant and bridge in the country and then let them enjoy the fruits of the 7th century that they love so much.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats   2006-04-21 10:22  

#2  Just eliminate the power source..............
Posted by: dorf   2006-04-21 10:08  

#1  Test for the new bunker busters!
Posted by: DarthVader   2006-04-21 09:40  

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