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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Is Iran Running Out of Uranium? |
| 2010-04-27 |
| Western governments may be scrambling to push through tougher international sanctions against Iran, but the Islamic Republic's nuclear program may be facing a more immediate hurdle: How to replenish its dwindling uranium stocks. Iran's need to find fresh supplies of raw uranium supplies is increasingly urgent, according to some reports. That may be one reason for the bear hug President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe last Thursday, when the Iranian leader landed in Harare on the first leg of an African trip. An anonymous Zimbabwe government source told Britain's Telegraph newspaper last Friday that his country's Minister of Presidential Affairs, Didymus Mutasa, had made a secret deal with Iran last month during a visit to Tehran, under which the Iranians would provide the sanctions-battered southern African country with critically needed oil supplies, in exchange for what he called "the exclusive uranium rights" in Zimbabwe. Neither Iran nor Zimbabwe has confirmed the uranium deal, which could violate U.N. sanctions, and on Monday an official from Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change, the minority partner in the coalition government, denied the report, insisting that "no such agreement was signed." Zimbabwe is believed to have large uranium deposits, discovered during the 1970s, which have never been mined. Iran's uranium stockpile is 30 years old, dating to the early 1980s, when South Africa sold it about 531 tons of yellowcake, the powder produced from the raw uranium dug from the ground which is enriched in order to create nuclear reactor fuel (or, potentially, bomb material). Of that supply, the country has only "a relatively small stock" left, according a report last December by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, which tracks Iran's nuclear industry. Much of Iran's yellowcake has been refined into uranium hexafluoride, which is kept under scrutiny by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory. Iran's current stockpile of low-enriched uranium, if enriched to weapons grade — a process that would require Iran kicking out the inspectors and thereby unambiguously declaring its intentions — would be enough to create a single nuclear bomb. But it is a lot less than Iran needs to fuel a nuclear reactor for energy purposes, let alone build several nuclear weapons that would constitute a credible nuclear arsenal. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #2 Well I'll be Damned, I thought Robert had stolen everything, now they've found something else valuable enough for him to steal Too. And the theft goes on, and on, and on. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2010-04-27 16:10 |
| #1 Where does Pakistan get its yellow cake? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-04-27 12:26 |