September 02, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
37 tons of ... yellowcake
Uranium enriched to at least 20% U-235 is refered to as highly enriched uranium (HEU). At enrichment levels lower than this somewhat arbitrary cut-off, which is still four times more enriched than economical for commercial reactor fuel, the term used is low enriched uranium (LEU). Modern weapon-grade is HEU at about 90% U-235. Jot these down. There will be an exam later.
The IAEA reported today that it has no evidence that Iran produced HEU. This after the highly publicized HEU contamination found at the Kalaye Electric Company and at the Natanz sites in Iran. "It appears plausible that the HEU contamination found at those locations may not have resulted from enrichment of uranium by Iran." I've covered this previously. Pakistan and China, derangement and normal untidiness, are the resepective causes for this effect. See my posts on the MEK-NeoCon romance.
Iran has announced a schedule for the conversion of 37 tons of 'yellowcake' (U3O8) into uranium hexaflouride gas (UF6), and t that it intends to test its gas centrifuge cascade.
I hope I misheard, but JRE seems to have characterized this in an interview this morning as "Iran's nuclear weapons program" ...
Update: The NYT's David Sanger uses the following turn of phrae: "sophisticated centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel". As long as the NYT frames the issue as centrifuges==bomb (but only in Iran), the intellectual level of discourse on this issue is going to remain wicked dumb. Sam knows that his toast gets darker when he pushes the handle on the toaster down a second or third time, and that the correct number of times is two. Sam is six, and autistic, but he knows toast when he sees it.
Anything that can distinguish between two atoms of uranium based on a 1% difference in mass is "capable" of enriching uranium, and anything that can enrich uranium from 0.7% (natural) to the 3-5% range (commercial fuel), can, if re-applied, enrich uranium to the 95% range (weapons grade). Oh well. The Times bought the last adventure on the Administrations terms. There is no reason to suspect that it isn't willing to do the same again. The Editor's Lamment should appear sometime in 2006 or 2007.
Written by EBW, despite MT's claims to the contrary.
The extended entry contains an image of a bank of centrifuges at a Urenco plant.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if you assume that all the weight in the yellowcake is uranium (which it isn't), the most 95% enriched you could get would be 272 kilograms. At 20% enriched the limit would be 1,295 kilograms. 200 kilograms would be a handful of weapons. Gas centrifuges are not very efficient. In the commercial nuclear industry a 1% bump in enrichment is a significant bump in expense. In my part of the industry (fuel manufacturing) we prefer to blend a lot of 3.7 with 3.5 to get to 3.6 rather than blend a little of 4.0 to get there because the 4.0 is so much more expensive. It takes a strong national-level effort (cf North Korea) to produce weapons-grade enrichments. The question is whether Iran cares to work that hard at it.
Posted by: Kendall at September 2, 2004 02:38 PM