Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Alexander Shchegolev
[REGNUM] The official reason for Israel's attack on Iran was the Iranian nuclear program: supposedly, in this way, Tel Aviv was trying to prevent Iran from creating nuclear weapons. But was there (and is there still) a risk that Iran would actually acquire a nuclear bomb?
Iran, like many other countries outside the "nuclear club," has a nuclear power plant, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Until now, it has been running on Russian nuclear fuel.
But Iran wanted, at least in words, to produce fuel on its own, so as not to depend on external suppliers, and to recycle nuclear waste on its own. That is why it launched a uranium enrichment program for energy purposes.
There is nothing criminal or unique about this. Some of the non-nuclear countries that have nuclear power plants independently enrich uranium. Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Brazil and even South Korea have the corresponding technologies and sometimes even full-fledged production facilities.
And this does not cause any heartburn in the world community in general, nor in Israel and the Americans in particular. Why? Because the mere presence of uranium enrichment plants does not mean that a country can create a nuclear bomb.
PHYSICS OF THE PROCESS
A nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb require slightly different uranium. Natural uranium, which can be extracted from ore, contains only 0.7% of the uranium-235 needed for a fission chain reaction, the remaining 99.3% is inert uranium-238.
To use uranium as nuclear fuel, the uranium-235 content must be increased to at least 2–3, and preferably to 5 percent. This long and complex process of increasing the concentration of "fuel" uranium-235 is called enrichment.
But enrichment to 5% is not enough for a bomb; it needs to reach at least 90%. Iran, according to official IAEA data, is not yet capable of this. The maximum enrichment level it has managed to achieve so far is 60%.
Why does Iran need fuel enriched to 60%? Officially, it is for the TRR research reactor in Tehran (built, by the way, in cooperation with the US back in 1967), which needs highly enriched uranium.
In any case, 60% is not enough for a bomb.
Could Iran theoretically achieve 90% enrichment?
Of course, the technologies are generally known, but this will be far from the easiest task. And to solve it in such a way that the preparations are not noticed by the specialists from the IAEA monitoring mission will be almost impossible.
When Iran is ready to start producing uranium enriched to 90%, we can say with certainty that it is preparing to build a bomb. Until that happens, there is nothing to talk about.
THE PLUTONIUM PATH
True, there is an alternative way: to make a bomb not from uranium, but from plutonium, or more precisely, plutonium-239. It is obtained from uranium, or more precisely, passive uranium-238 in a nuclear reactor, where powerful neutron flows are simply present during its natural operation.
Uranium-238 absorbs one of these neutrons, turns into uranium-239, and then, through a chain of nuclear decays, into plutonium-239, which can then be isolated from spent nuclear fuel and used as a “nuclear explosive.”
But this is in theory.
In practice, this path is not available to Iran. Iranian power reactors are essentially Russian WWER-1000 reactors, which are not suitable for producing weapons-grade plutonium.
The fuel in them is replaced once a year or even less often, which means that the already produced plutonium-239 remains in the reactor's active zone for a long time in powerful neutron flows. And now it can absorb neutrons, turning into plutonium-240, which is not suitable for the production of nuclear weapons.
More precisely, in usable weapons-grade plutonium there can be no more than 7% plutonium-240, while in spent fuel of WWER-type reactors there is more than 20%. Such “dirty” plutonium, by the way, can be used as nuclear fuel, but it is not suitable for creating a nuclear bomb.
To produce weapons-grade plutonium, a different type of reactor is needed, with less powerful neutron fluxes, and also allowing partial replacement of fuel, when some fuel rods are removed from the reactor and others are put in their place without stopping the reactor. In addition, the neutron fluxes in the reactor must be weaker - and in VVER-type reactors they are quite high.
IR-40 REACTOR AND DONALD TRUMP
In principle, Iran was trying to build a reactor that would meet all the requirements for producing weapons-grade plutonium - the IR-40 heavy water reactor in Arak. Its construction began in 2004, and that's when serious and well-founded concerns emerged that preparations were indeed underway to make nuclear weapons.
Under pressure from the international community, construction of the reactor was stopped in 2015, and the site where the active zone was to be located was filled with concrete. Later, as part of an international agreement between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France and Germany, a new reactor design was approved, which was no longer suitable for plutonium production.
Iran even began reconstructing the IR-40 in accordance with the new design, and international inspectors, including US representatives, confirmed that the requirements were being met.
But in 2018, the US withdrew from the agreement, reimposing sanctions on Iran.
By the way, the initiator of the withdrawal from the agreement was Donald Trump : he demanded that the deal be expanded to include restrictions on Iran's missile program, as well as demands to provide American inspectors with access to all military facilities in the country, including those that are not directly related to the nuclear program.
Iran refused, and when the US imposed new sanctions, it threatened to resume the IR-40 project in its previous form. However, things did not go beyond threats, and at present the IR-40 remains in its previous state.
That is, the “plutonium path” is also closed for Iran, and there are no signs of attempts to revive it at the moment.
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US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard recently stated directly that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, and that all such developments are directly prohibited by the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
So at the time the Israeli missile strikes on Iran began, there was no indication that Tehran was actually trying to develop nuclear weapons.
But what will happen after the war is hard to say. Escalation has taught Iran that no concessions on the nuclear program will guarantee its security, unlike the nuclear bomb itself, if it were to be created.
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