Recently I have been watching a news story about Iran and their Uranium reserves. It seems that via the IAEA, The United States, Iran, France, and Russia are working on a deal which would have Iran sending it's low enriched uranium to Russia for processing into fuel for Iran's research reactor. The research reactor's purpose is to generate isotopes for cancer treatments, and other uses.
The reason this is interesting is that previously Iran had refused any outside help with it's uranium enrichment. This is actually in direct opposition to a treaty signed in 1968 called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which restricted non-nuclear countries from pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Iran is walking a thin line by stating that it's enrichment is solely for civilian power purposes, not weapons production.
The difference between uranium for power production, and uranium for weapons production is a matter of scale. That scale is VERY significant however. Uranium, as it occurs naturally, is composed of three different isotopes in significant amounts. Those isotopes are U238, U235, and U234. U235 is the one which is important because this is the one needed for power and for weapons. For fuel, the percentage of U235 to other isotopes needs to be about 3% to 5%, for weapons it needs to be >%85. An inefficient "dirty bomb" can be made with %20 enriched uranium. The percentage of U235 in naturally occurring uranium is about .71%. So you see, to get fuel grade uranium, a significant amount of enrichment needs to be done as the naturally occurring amount needs to be increased by 5 to 7 times. For a weapon it needs to be increased as much as 120 times.
One of the processes used for this enrichment is called "gas centrifuge". Gas centrifuge is the process of heating uranium until it changes it's material state from solid to gas, then passing it through a centrifuge which is designed to remove some of the heavier U238 atoms. After the centrifuge, what is left is uranium with a slightly higher percentage of U235 and U234 atoms. The amount of enrichment which occurs with this process is very small, so this has to be repeated a great many times to get usable amounts of U235. According to Wikipedia, this process accounts for about 54% of the world's enriched uranium.
Based upon reported intelligence, and upon what Iran has declared, there is enough technology and uranium in Iran to create weapons grade uranium. However it would take them a few months to do so.
The latest update on this story is that Iran does not now want to have Russia handle it's uranium, but it would rather purchase enriched uranium for it's reactor. They do not want to surrender, or even ship out their uranium for fear of losing it. Nor do they want to have their enrichment capabilities restricted. Basically, they seem to be telling the international community that they wish to be viewed as being capable of producing a weapon if they choose to do so.
It is my opinion that Iran wishes to become the first Islamic super power. They posses significant oil reserves which would seem to ensure that they would have economic stability for the next century or so. But I think they want to have a significant military threat as well, and the short cut to that is the capability to have a nuclear weapon. Therefore this issue may not be resolved for some time to come.
Iran may be a lost cause, but this does bring another topic into my mind. How would you feel if countries like The United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, and Israel became vendors to developing countries in terms of nuclear fuel? The idea would be that they would not have to invest in a fuel cycle themselves, because they could get the fuel and possibly the entire plant from us, and return the used fuel to us when it was finished being used. This is not my idea, and it is not something that comes up in my facebook chats, but I think it should.
So, Uranium or mine?
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