Sorry for the wierd layout. I copied this from a pdf article from bulletin of atomic scientists. Its not a free article and the pdf is to big to attach. Either way it is a good one and it explains why iran cant have a nuke before 2009.
When could Iran get the Bomb?
26 BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS JULY/AUGUST 2006
< < what we know and what we don’t know
about iran’s nuclear program. > >
by david albright
Though hardly transparent,
Director of
National Intelligence
John Negroponte’s
testimony on Iran before
the Senate Intelligence
Committee on February 2 was
clearly cautious. The U.S. intelligence
community judges that Iran probably
has neither a nuclear weapon nor the
necessary fissile material for a weapon,
he stated.
If Iran continues on
its current path, it “will likely have
the capability to produce a nuclear
weapon within the next decade,” he
added. The basis for this estimate
remains classified, although Iran’s
lack of knowledge and experience in
building and running large numbers
of centrifuges for uranium enrichment
was reportedly an important
consideration.
When pressed, U.S.
officials have said that they interpret
Negroponte’s remark to mean that
Iran will need roughly 5–10 years before
it possesses nuclear weapons.
Despite this caution, a handful of
U.S. officials have since attempted
to overstate Iran’s nuclear progress,
contradicting even this latest estimate.
It appears that in the ongoing
crisis between Iran and the United
States, the crucial struggle for public
perception of the Iranian nuclear
threat is well under way.
Following an International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) briefing of
U.N. Security Council permanent
members and Germany in mid-March
about a group of 164 centrifuges at
Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment
site, U.S. officials began to distort
what the IAEA had said.
Under the cloak of anonymity, these officials told
journalists that Iran’s actions represented
a significant acceleration of its
enrichment program. The IAEA was
“shocked,” “astonished,” and “blown
away” by Iran’s progress on gas centrifuges,
according to these U.S. officials,
leading the United States to revise its
own timeline for when Iran will get the
bomb.
In reality, IAEA officials said
they were not surprised by Iran’s actions.
These U.S. statements, a senior
IAEA official told the Associated Press,
came “from people who are seeking a
crisis, not a solution.”1
Some outside experts and officials,
including Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, may be trying to undermine
U.S. intelligence assessments on Iran’s
timeline to the bomb by highlighting
the intelligence community’s failure to
correctly assess Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction efforts.2
Although the intelligence community deserves strong
criticism for its analysis of Iraq’s weapons
programs, the more recent Iranian
analysis has been subject to more thorough
review and is more consensual
than the Iraqi assessments. For example,
centrifuge experts at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, who challenged
faulty CIA conclusions that Iraqi aluminum
tubes were for a reconstituted
nuclear weapons program long before
the war, have been central in assessing
Iran’s gas centrifuge program for the
intelligence community, according to a
U.S. intelligence official.
Iran is indeed on the verge of mastering
a critical step in building and
operating a gas centrifuge plant that
would be able to produce enriched
uranium for either peaceful or military
purposes. However, it can be expected
to face serious technical hurdles before
it can reliably produce large quantities
of enriched uranium.
Many details about Iran’s technical
nuclear capabilities and plans are unknown,
and the IAEA has neither been
able to verify that Iran has declared its
nuclear activities in full nor to establish
conclusively that Iran does not have
hidden nuclear enrichment sites. Western
governments view with skepticism
Iranian denials of intentions to produce
highly enriched uranium (HEU)
or to build nuclear weapons.
Yet there is no evidence of an
Iranian decision to build a nuclear arsenal,
let alone any knowledge of an official Iranian
schedule for acquiring nuclear weapons.
During the past three years of IAEA
inspections, the international community
has learned a great deal of information
about the Iranian program
that can be used to estimate the minimum
amount of time Iran would need
to produce enough HEU for a nuclear
bomb.
According to several possible
scenarios, Iran appears to need at
least three years before it could have
enough HEU to make a nuclear weapon.
Given the technical difficulty of the
task, it could take Iran much longer.
With political rhetoric likely to intensify
during the coming months, it is
essential to have as clear an evaluation
as possible of Iranian nuclear capabilities.
It is also essential to avoid repeating
the mistakes that were made prior to the
Iraq War, when senior Bush administration
officials and their allies outside government
hyped the Iraqi nuclear threat
to gain support in confronting Iraq.
Out of the gate
Iran’s recent actions appear aimed
at rapidly installing and running gas
centrifuges, which can be used to
separate uranium 235 from uranium
238—the process known as enrichment.
In early January 2006, Iran
removed 52 IAEA seals that verified
the suspension of Iran’s P-1 centrifuge
uranium enrichment program
that had been in effect since October
2003. (The P-1 centrifuge is a design
that Iran developed from plans acquired
through the nuclear smuggling
network of Pakistani scientist A. Q.
Khan.)
The seals were located at the
Natanz, Pars Trash, and Farayand
Technique sites, Iran’s main centrifuge
facilities. On February 11, Iran
started to enrich uranium in a small
number of centrifuges at Natanz.
After removing the seals, Iran also
started to substantially renovate key
portions of its main centrifuge research
and development facility, the
Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz.
Iran secretly began construction
on the pilot plant in 2001, and it installed
about 200 centrifuges in 2002
and 2003. The pilot plant is designed
to hold six 164-machine cascades,
groups of centrifuges connected by
pipes that work together to enrich
greater amounts of uranium to higher
enrichment levels than a group of individual
centrifuges.
The plant has space for additional, smaller test
cascades, for a total of about 1,000 centrifuges.
At Natanz and Farayand Technique,
Iran quickly restarted testing and
checking centrifuge components to
determine if they were manufactured
precisely enough to use in a centrifuge.
By early March, Iran had restarted enriching
uranium at the pilot plant in
10- and 20-centrifuge cascades.
Iran also moved processing tanks
and an autoclave—used to heat centrifuge
feed material known as uranium
hexafluoride into a gas prior to insertion
into a centrifuge cascade—into its
main production facility, the underground
Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP)
at Natanz. This plant is designed to
eventually hold 50,000–60,000 centrifuges.
Iran told the IAEA that it intends
to start installing the first 3,000
P-1 centrifuges at the FEP in the fourth
quarter of 2006. A key outstanding
question is whether Iran has procured
from abroad or domestically manufactured
all the equipment and materials
it needs to finish the first module of
3,000 centrifuges.
Iran’s Uranium Conversion Facility
at Isfahan, which converts natural
uranium into uranium hexafluoride,
has continued to operate since restarting
in August 2005, following the
beginning of the breakdown in the
suspension.
By May 2006, Iran had produced 110
metric tons of uranium hexafluoride.3
Assuming that roughly 5 metric tons of
uranium hexafluoride are needed to make
enough HEU for a nuclear weapon, this stock
represents enough natural uranium hexafluoride
for more than 20 nuclear weapons.
Although this uranium hexafluoride
contains impurities that can interfere
with the operation of centrifuges and
reduce their output or cause them to
fail, most IAEA experts believe that
Iran can overcome this problem and
that the issue of hexafluoride impurity
has been overblown in the media. Iran
is known to be working to improve
the purity of its uranium hexafluoride.
If necessary, Iran could use its existing
stock of impure material, either further
purifying this uranium hexafluoride or
settling for reduced output and a higher
centrifuge failure rate.
Centrifuge know-how
A key part of the development of Iran’s
gas centrifuge program is the operation
of the 164-machine test cascades
at the Natanz pilot plant, which will
be the workhorses of any future centrifuge
plant. Iran finished installing its
first test cascade in the fall of 2003, but
the cascade never operated with uranium
hexafluoride prior to the October
2003 suspension. On April 13, 2006,
Iran announced that it had produced
low-enriched uranium (LEU) in its 164-
machine cascade. Soon afterward, it announced
that it had enriched uranium
up to a level of almost 5 percent.
Restarting the cascade took several
months because Iran had to repair damaged
centrifuges. According to IAEA
reports, many centrifuges crashed or
broke when the cascade was shut down
at the start of the suspension in 2003.
Before introducing uranium hexafluoride,
Iran had to reconnect all the pipes,
establish a vacuum inside the cascade,
and prepare the cascade for operation
with uranium hexafluoride.
The initial performance of the P-1
centrifuges in this cascade has been
lower than expected. Based on the
April 12 statements of Gholam Reza
Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, the average
annualized output of the centrifuges
in this cascade is relatively low.4 In the
same interview, Aghazadeh implied
that he expects the average output of
each P-1 centrifuge to almost double
in the main plant.
In addition, Iran has not yet run
this cascade continuously to produce
enriched uranium. According to a
Vienna diplomat, the cascade operated
with uranium hexafluoride only
about half of its first month of operation,
although it continued to operate
under vacuum the rest of the time.
During this period, according to a
May 19 Agence France Presse report,
the cascade produced only “dozens
of grams” of enriched uranium, far
below the more than 2,000 grams
Aghazadeh predicted the cascade
would produce running continuously
for that length of time. The Iranian
centrifuge operators do not yet have
sufficient understanding of cascade
operation and must conduct a series
of longer tests to develop a deeper
understanding.
The IAEA reported in April that
Iran is building the second and third
cascades at the pilot plant. A senior
diplomat in Vienna said in a late-
April interview that the second and
third cascades could start by early
summer. This schedule would allow
Iran to test multiple cascades running
in parallel, a necessary step before
building a centrifuge plant composed
of such cascades. The diplomat
speculated that Iran could continue
with this pattern, installing the fourth
and fifth in July and August, respectively.
The space for the sixth cascade
is currently occupied by the 10- and
20-machine cascades, he said.
Iran would likely want to run its
cascades individually and in parallel
for several months to ensure that
no significant problems develop and
to gain confidence that it can reliably
enrich uranium in the cascades.
Problems could include excessive vibration
of the centrifuges, motor or
power failures, pressure and temperature
instabilities, or breakdown of the
vacuum. Iran may also want to test
any emergency systems designed to
shut down the cascade without losing
many centrifuges in the event of
a major failure. Absent major problems,
Iran is expected to need until
the fall or later to demonstrate successful
operation of its cascades and
their associated emergency and control
systems.
Once Iran overcomes the technical
hurdle of operating its demonstration
cascades, it can duplicate them
and even create larger cascades. Iran
would then be ready to build a centrifuge
plant able to produce significant
amounts of enriched uranium either
for peaceful purposes or for nuclear
weapons.
The underground path
Answering the question of how soon
Iran could produce enough HEU for
a nuclear weapon is complicated and
fraught with uncertainty. Beyond the
technical uncertainties, several other
important factors are unknown. Will
Iran develop an enrichment capability
but produce only LEU for use in
nuclear power reactors and not any
HEU for use in a nuclear weapon?
Will Iran withdraw from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
expel IAEA inspectors, and concentrate
on building secret nuclear
facilities? How does the Iranian
regime perceive the political risks of
a particular action, such as trying to
make HEU in the pilot plant? What
resources will Iran apply to finishing
its uranium enrichment facilities? Will
there be preemptive military strikes
against Iranian nuclear sites?
For the purposes of these estimates,
a crude fission nuclear weapon is estimated
to require 15–20 kilograms
of weapon-grade uranium (HEU containing
more than 90 percent uranium
235).5 Iran’s most direct path to obtaining
HEU for nuclear weapons is to
build a relatively small gas centrifuge
plant that can make weapon-grade
uranium directly.6 If Iran built such a
plant openly, it would be an acknowledgement
that it seeks nuclear weapons
and would invite a harsh response
from the West and the IAEA.
As a result, Iran would likely pursue
such a path in utmost secrecy, without
declaring to the IAEA the facility and
any associated uranium hexafluoride
production facilities. Because Iran announced
earlier this year that it was
ending its implementation of the Additional
Protocol—an advanced safeguards
agreement created in the 1990s
to fix traditional safeguards’ inability
to provide adequate assurance that
a country does not have undeclared
nuclear facilities or materials—the
IAEA would face a difficult challenge
discovering such a clandestine facility.
The IAEA has already reported that it
can no longer effectively monitor centrifuge
components, unless they are
at Natanz and within areas subject to
IAEA containment and surveillance.
A centrifuge plant containing about
1,500–1,800 P-1 centrifuges is sufficient
to make more than enough HEU
for one nuclear weapon per year.
(Each P-1 centrifuge is assumed to
have an output of about 2.5–3 separative
work units [swu] per year.7 With
a capacity of 4,500 swu per year, this
facility could produce as much as 28
kilograms of weapon-grade uranium
a year.8)
Iran has enough components to
build up to 5,000 centrifuges, according
to some senior diplomats
in Vienna. Other senior diplomats,
however, have said that Iran may
not have 5,000 of all components,
and that many components are not
expected to pass quality control. In
total, Iran is estimated to have in
hand enough decent components for
at least 1,000 to 2,000 centrifuges,
in addition to the roughly 800 centrifuges
already slated for the pilot
plant. Iran could also build new centrifuge
components, and, in fact, may
have already started to do so.
If Iran had started to build a clandestine
plant with 1,500 –1,800 centrifuges
in early 2006, it could assemble
enough additional usable machines
in about 15–18 months, or by about
mid-2007. It would need to assemble
centrifuges at the upper limit of its
past rate, about 70–100 centrifuges
per month, to accomplish this goal.
In the meantime, Iran would need to
identify a new facility where it could
install the centrifuge cascades, since itTINE
is unlikely to choose Natanz as the location
of a secret plant. It would also
need to install control and emergency
equipment, feed and withdrawal
systems, and other peripheral equipment.
It would then need to integrate
all of these systems, test them, and
commission the plant.
Iran could
start immediately to accomplish these
steps, even before the final testing of
the 164-machine cascades at Natanz,
but final completion of a clandestine
plant would be highly unlikely before
the end of 2007.
Given another year to make enough
HEU for a nuclear weapon, and a few
more months to convert the uranium
into weapon components, Iran could
have its first nuclear weapon in 2009.
By this time, Iran could have had sufficient
time to prepare the other components
of a nuclear weapon, although
the weapon may not be small enough
to be deliverable by a ballistic missile.
This result reflects a worst-case assessment
for arms control. Iran can be
expected to take longer, as it is likely
to encounter technical difficulties
that would delay bringing a centrifuge
plant into operation. Factors
causing delay could include difficulty
assembling and installing
so many centrifuges in such
a short time period, inability to
achieve the relatively high separative
work output used in these
estimates, difficulty acquiring
sufficient dual-use equipment
overseas, taking longer than expected
to overcome difficulties
in operating the cascades as a
single production unit, or a
holdup in commissioning the secret
centrifuge plant.
Iranian officials have recently announced
that they are also working
on developing the more advanced
P-2 centrifuge, the designs for which
were also obtained from the Khan
network. Iran’s progress on this centrifuge
appears to lag behind that of
the P-1 centrifuge, as evidenced by a
lack of procurement records for P-2
parts. The IAEA has been unable to
determine the exact status of the P-2
program, but what is known appears
to exclude the existence of undeclared
P-2 facilities sufficiently advanced to
significantly shift projections of the
amount of time Iran would need to
produce nuclear weapons.
Readying a “breakout”
Another way that Iran could produce
HEU for nuclear weapons would
be to use its Natanz production
facility, even though the centrifuge
module is being designed to produce
LEU for use in nuclear reactors. Iran
has said it intends to start installing its
first module of 3,000 centrifuges in the
production facility’s underground halls
in late 2006, though it doesn’t presently
have enough centrifuge parts to complete
the module. Since the pilot plant
would likely have already produced
a relatively large amount of LEU, the
time to produce enough HEU for a
nuclear weapon in this facility could be
dramatically shortened.
At the above rates of centrifuge assembly,
and assuming that it has, can
produce, or acquire abroad enough
P-1 centrifuges and associated equipment,
Iran could finish assembling the
module’s 3,000 centrifuges sometime
in 2008. Although Iran would likely
build and operate some cascades before
all the centrifuges are assembled,
it will probably need at least another year
to finish this module, placing the
completion date in 2009 or 2010. Unexpected
complications could delay
the commissioning date. Alternatively,
Iran could accelerate the pace by manufacturing,
assembling, and installing
centrifuges more quickly. Given all
the difficult tasks that must be accomplished,
however, Iran is unlikely to
commission this module much before
the start of 2009.
If Iran decided to make HEU in
this module, it would have several
alternatives. Because of the small
throughput and great operational
flexibility of centrifuges, HEU for
nuclear weapons could be produced
by reconfiguring the cascades in the
module or by batch recycling, which
entails feeding the cascade product
back into the same cascade for subsequent
cycles of enrichment. Reconfiguration could be as
straightforward as connecting separate
cascades in series and carefully
selecting the places where new pipes
interconnect the cascades. Iran’s
3,000-centrifuge module is slated
to be composed of almost 20 164-
centrifuge cascades, operating together
under one common control system.
With such a setup, reconfiguration
would not require the disassembly
of the individual cascades and could
be accomplished within days. Such a
setup could lessen by 10 percent the
enrichment output, and the HEU’s
final enrichment level may reach only
80 percent, which is still sufficient for
use in an existing implosion design,
albeit with a lower explosive yield.
With a reconfigured plant, and
starting with natural uranium, 20
kilograms of HEU could be produced
within four to six months. If
Iran waited until it had produced a
stock of LEU before reconfiguring
and then used this stock as the initial
feedstock in the reconfigured
plant, it could produce 20 kilograms
of HEU in about one to
two months.
Batch recycling would entail
putting the cascade product
back through the cascade several
times, without changing the cascade’s
basic setup. Starting with natural uranium,
cascades of the type expected at
Natanz could produce weapon-grade
uranium after four to five recycles.
Twenty kilograms of weapon-grade
uranium could be produced in about
six to twelve months. If the batch operation
started with an existing stock of
LEU, the time to produce 20 kilograms
of weapon-grade uranium would drop
to about one to two months.
Whether using batch recycling or
reconfiguration, Iran would likely operate
the module to make LEU so that
any production of HEU would be expected
to happen quickly. Still, using
either of these breakout approaches,
Iran is not likely to have enough HEU
for a nuclear weapon until 2009, and
technical obstacles may further delay
the operation of the module in the
production facility.
Looking at a timeline of at least
three years before Iran could have a
nuclear weapons capability means
that there is still time to pursue aggressive
diplomatic options and time
for measures such as sanctions to have
an effect, if they become necessary.
In the short term, it is imperative
for the international community to
intensify its efforts to disrupt or slow
Iran’s ongoing overseas acquisition of
dual-use items for its centrifuge program.
Iran has encountered greater
difficulty acquiring these items because
of the increased scrutiny by key
supplier states and companies, forcing
Iranian smugglers to look elsewhere.
As Iran applies more devious methods
or seeks these items in other countries,
greater efforts will be required
to thwart it from succeeding.
It is vital to continue to understand
what Iran has accomplished, what
it still has to learn, and when it will
reach a point when a plan to pursue
nuclear weapons covertly or openly
could succeed more quickly than the
international community can react.
Although these estimates include significant
uncertainties, they reinforce
the view that Iran must foreswear any
deployed enrichment capability and
accept adequate inspections. Otherwise,
we risk a seismic shift in the balance
of power in the region.
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Originally Posted by Damien_III
Why wait 20 years until they go broke, better to build it now while they are rolling in money.