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How Far Is Iran Away From Making A Nuclear Weapon?
Would you believe two?
6 Responses to “How Far Is Iran Away From Making A Nuclear Weapon?”
No, I don’t believe two.
I remember Saddam was 45 minutes from nuking London a few years ago.
We need to start demanding a bit more evidence before falling for the same line on Iran.
This estimate is a worse case scenario from a biased source. Nowhere is any mention of the engineering and logistics setbacks to the Iranain program. Without direct support from Pakistan, the U235 program is behind even the Iranian estimates.
And I thought they just had their major fuel source cut off by Russia, where will they be getting this Uranium to enrich?
I don’t think the yellowcake is from Russia. The Russians are supposed to supply LEU for the commercial reactors. I think the uranium ore is minded in Iran.
How far (and long)?
It depends on how much help the Iranians get from elsewhere (which would speed progress).
In an article like that, for every “if” add one or two years to the time. If you notice, they could have material for a bomb (not a bomb itself) in two years IF:
- “they continue at this pace”
- “they get the centrifuges to work”
- they “actually enrich uranium on a distinct basis”
Those are three really, really big “ifs”
The article is also factually wrong. It says:
Since those centrifuges are not operational, their capacity has been potentially tripled. Of course, the article doesn’t even mention the problems with Iranian UF6 purity, which they need to address to keep their centrifuges from crashing. The UF6 the Iranians used to test their 164 cascade was actually pure hex purchased from China. Iranian UF6 is pretty sucky actually.
Iran has a long way to go. They are making steady progress, but the technology and engineering hurdles are not minor. Unfortunately, the press grossly simplifies everything, making it all sound easier than it actually is.