Iran's nuclear map - much more than you knew about
There's a great map of Iran's nuclear facilities that's been posted
here.
It's by Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow with the Belfer Center at Harvard
University's Kennedy School and a former deputy director-general for
safeguards at the IAEA, and by Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy
Policy Program at The Washington Institute, specializing in energy
matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
If you click the link, you can even download a pdf version (which I did). I had no idea that there were this many facilities and I suspect that most of you didn't know either (I thought there were four or five facilities). Most of these facilities will remain intact if President Obama's agreement with Iran goes through and is implemented.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Arak heavy water production plant, Barack Hussein Obama, Bushehr, Fordow nuclear plant, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Natanz, P 5+1, plutonium, uranium, uranium enrichment
Great news: US 'not confident' it has identified all of Iran's uranium mines
A US official at the P 5+1 nuclear talks has told the Jerusalem Post that the United States is '
not confident' that it has identified all of Iran's uranium mines.
Western powers argue that a deal is better than not for one reason
above all: Visibility. The US seeks access for the UN's International
Atomic Energy Agency to the entire chain of custody on Iran's enrichment
program. US officials say this access is the world's best chance to
detect the siphoning of raw material to covert facilities— of far
greater concern to Washington than Iran's facilities publicly declared.
Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether the US government is
confident that it has identified all of Iran's uranium mines, a US
official at the talks said they are not.
The two mines known to the US are at Gachin and Saghand, where a
nearby mill, at Ardakan, is near completion and is scheduled to begin
production shortly. The point of a deal, the official said, is to keep
track of the product of those mines and mills.
An entire chain of custody would have to be covert, from the
extraction of ore to its conversion to yellowcake, to its conversion to
fuel and ultimately its weaponization, for Iran to circumvent this deal
and build a weapon, the official continued. Even then, the US seeks
access for the IAEA to additional facilities suspected of aiding in
covert processes.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, P 5+1, uranium, uranium enrichment, yellowcake uranium powder
Inevitable: Syria accuses Israel of using depleted uranium shells
They have learned how to lie from
Lebanon and the 'Palestinians.' It's always worked for them. And therefore it was likely inevitable that as soon as Israel struck a military target in Damascus, an accusation that Israel used
depleted uranium would follow.
Israel used depleted uranium shells in the alleged strike in Syria on
Sunday, a senior Syrian military source told Russia Today on Monday.
"When
the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake, then a giant golden
mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted
uranium shells," the source said.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the production of enriched uranium
for use in nuclear reactors. It is 2.5 times as dense as steel, which
allows it to penetrate heavy protection. The material is known to be
toxic, but not dangerously radioactive.
...
The senior official speaking to RT downplayed the strategic importance
of the weapons targeted in the attack, saying the military losses were
"negligible" and that valuable equipment was removed from the site of
attack after a previous strike.
"The target was just an
ordinary weapons warehouse. The bombing is an ultimatum to us – it had
no strategic motivation," he was quoted by RT as saying.
A
Western intelligence source told Reuters the attack targeted "stores of Fateh-110 missiles
that were in transit from Iran to Hezbollah," while a senior Hezbollah source denied to Kuwaiti daily Alrai on Monday that the weapons targeted belonged to his organization.
Another high-ranking Syrian military source told the Times that dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace in Damascus were killed in the Israel strike.
A doctor at the Syrian military’s Tishreen Hospital said there were at
least 100 dead soldiers and many dozens more wounded, the Times reported.
You don't think a senior Syrian military official would lie or something, do you?
Heh.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, chemical weapons, Damascus, Fateh 110, Hezbullah, lies, Syria, Syrian uprising, uranium
Great news: Syria has enough uranium for 5 nukes
Israel may have destroyed Syria's nuclear reactor (pictured) five years ago, but the Assad regime still has enough unenriched uranium for five nuclear weapons, according to a report in the
Financial Times of London.
David Albright, the head of the US-based Institute for Science and International Security
think-tank, and a leading expert on the Iranian nuclear programme, said
there were legitimate concerns about a uranium stockpile in Syria.
“There are real worries about what has happened to the uranium that
Syria was planning to put into the Al-Kibar reactor shortly before the
reactor was destroyed in 2007,” he said. “There’s no question that, as
Syria gets engulfed in civil war, the whereabouts of this uranium is
worrying governments. There is evidence to suggest this issue has been
raised by one government directly with the IAEA.”
An IAEA inspection team visited the destroyed Al-Kibar site in May
2008 and only found traces of uranium. This merely added to the mystery
of where the 50 tonnes of uranium, if it exists, might be. Such a
stockpile would be enough, according to experts, to provide weapons
grade fuel for five atomic devices.
...
Some
government officials have raised concerns that Iran, which is closely
allied to the Syrian regime and urgently needs uranium for its nuclear
programme, might be trying to seize such a stockpile.
These officials’ fears have been triggered by signs of movement at
what they allege is a secret uranium conversion facility that the Syrian
regime built at the town of Marj al-Sultan near Damascus.
Three satellite pictures of the Marj al-Sultan site taken in October,
November and December of 2012 and shown to the FT, and displayed here
above and on the left, appear to show the gradual clearance of a large
orchard there, for no apparent reason.
Whether the uranium is at the site is unclear, the officials
conceded. But they said: “Syria is almost certainly in possession of
good quality uranium of the type that Iran has been trying to acquire on
the international market for years. It would certainly be possible to
transfer this from Syria to Iran by air.”
Were that to happen – and Iran were to attempt to build another
secret uranium plant – such a stockpile could be a “vital resource”, the
officials argued, and possibly be used to build a bomb.
And lest you think it would be so easy to shoot down a plane flying uranium from Syria to Iran, recall that Syria uses
commercial flights on Syrian Airlines for that purpose.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Iranian-Syrian axis, Syrian nuclear program, uranium
Breaking: Passenger on Moscow - Tehran flight had uranium in suitcase
Israel Radio has just reported (3:00 Friday) that a passenger on a Moscow - Tehran flight was discovered to have uranium in his suitcase during a routine security check in Moscow. The security agents' suspicions were aroused by radioactivity in the security area.
More details if I have them before the Sabbath starts.
UPDATE 3:19 PMThis is from
Reuters:
The Russian customs service said Friday it had seized radioactive material found in the luggage of a passenger bound for Tehran at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.
The service said in a statement that tests showed the material was a radioactive isotope which could be obtained only "as a result of a nuclear reactor's operations."
The statement said the material had triggered an alarm in the airport's radiation control system. The luggage search led to a discovery of 18 pieces of radioactive metal packed in individual steel casings.
I'm almost surprised the Russians stopped him....
Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Moscow, Tehran, uranium
Lots of material for a dirty bomb in Libya
This should make you feel all warm and fuzzy. A former IAEA inspector says that Libya has lots of radioactive waste and uranium fuel left over to make a
dirty bomb.
Tajoura continues to stock large quantities of radioisotopes, radioactive waste and low-enriched uranium fuel after three decades of nuclear research and radioisotope production, he said.
"While we can be thankful that the highly enriched uranium stocks are no longer in Libya, the remaining material in Tajoura could, if it ended up in the wrong hands, be used as ingredients for dirty bombs. The situation at Tajoura today is unclear."
A so-called dirty bomb can combine conventional explosives such as dynamite with radioactive material.
Experts describe the threat of a crude fissile nuclear bomb, which is technically difficult to manufacture and requires hard-to-obtain bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, as a "low probability, high consequence act" -- unlikely but with the potential to cause large-scale harm to life and property.
On the other hand, a "dirty bomb", where conventional explosives are used to disperse radiation from a radioactive source, is a "high probability, low consequence act" with more potential to terrorise than cause large loss of life.
After the fall of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2003, looting of nuclear and radioactive material storage took place at the Tuwaitha nuclear research centre near Baghdad, Heinonen said.
"Most likely due to pure luck, the story did not end in a radiological disaster," Heinonen wrote, adding the rebel Transitional National Council would need to be aware of the material sitting around Tajoura.
Once a transition of power takes place, "it should assure the world that it accepts its responsibility and will take the necessary steps to secure these potentially dangerous radioactive sources", he said.
What could go wrong?
Labels: dirty bomb, Libya, nuclear waste, radioactive isotopes, uranium
