Iran Raises Uranium Output as Photos Show Need for Wider Checks
Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Satellite photos indicate that Iranhas increased production at a uranium mine, underscoring theneed for wider UN inspections to determine whether the countryis trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Evidence of stepped-up activity at the Gchine mine, nearthe Persian Gulf coast city of Bandar Abbas, is seen in picturesobtained by Bloomberg News and the Washington-based New AmericaFoundation, according to four nuclear analysts who examined theimages. The mine could produce enough uranium to craft at leasttwo atomic bombs a year, experts said.
The photographs, taken on April 26 and Oct. 3 byDigitalGlobe Inc. and GeoEye Inc., two U.S. commercial satellitecompanies, show Iran increased the rate at which it pumps wastefrom the mine during the intervening months. Iran has filled onewaste pool since November 2008, when a previous photograph wastaken, and built a second pond with pipes connecting it toprocessing tanks that separate the metal from rock.
“Iran’s decision to expand mining and milling at BandarAbbas seems to validate the suspicions of those who think it wasthe main uranium site for a covert program,” Jeffrey G. Lewis,nuclear strategy and non-proliferation director at the NewAmerica Foundation, a public policy institute, said in an Oct.20 interview.
The increased uranium production indicates that UnitedNations inspectors need to widen their field of vision beyondfacilities such as Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz andits Esfahan conversion facility, Lewis and other analysts said.The UN’s nuclear agency should renew demands to inspect researchlabs, machine shops and mines including Gchine, they added.
Top Priority
The international community’s top priority should be togain “considerably more access into the Iranian program as awhole so that there is a verifiable distance between Iran’soption to build a bomb and the exercise of that option,” saidLewis, who formerly ran the nuclear non-proliferation researchprogram at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The U.S. and several allies say Iran’s atomic work is coverfor the development of a weapon, while the government in Tehraninsists that the program is peaceful and intended for civilianpurposes such as electricity generation.
Iran has been under investigation by the UN since 2003because it concealed nuclear work from the world body’sInternational Atomic Energy Agency for two decades. It issubject to three sets of UN economic sanctions for ignoringSecurity Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment andrelated work and allow wider inspections.
Weapon Fears
The IAEA said Oct. 29 that it would consult with worldpowers and Iran after the country failed to fully accept a UN-brokered plan for Russia to process nuclear fuel for a medical-research reactor in Tehran. Iran said its “technical andeconomic concerns” had to be addressed.
The proposal would slow any effort by Iran to make a weaponwith its 1,500-kilogram (3,300-pound) stockpile of low-enricheduranium and, if accepted, improve prospects for internationaltalks aimed at ensuring that the country doesn’t produce a bomb.
Holder of the world’s No. 2 oil and natural gas reserves,Iran has been using about 530 tons of uranium obtained fromSouth Africa in 1982 to fuel its declared enrichment program,centered at the Natanz plant, about 210 kilometers (130 miles)south of Tehran. IAEA inspectors have long sought to establishwhether Iran has an alternative fuel source for a nuclear effortrunning in parallel with the declared program.
Yellowcake
The Gchine site, which Iran no longer allows the IAEA tovisit, could produce enough raw uranium for processing into twowarheads a year if Iran chose to secretly enrich the uranium toweapons grade, according to calculations by the VerificationResearch, Training and Information Center, a London-basedinstitute that is a non-governmental observer at the IAEA andfunded by European governments.
Gchine has the capacity to produce annually up to 21 tonsof milled uranium, or yellowcake, Iran told the Paris-basedNuclear Energy Agency, part of the Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development, in 2007. Satellite photographstaken last year showed that the mine was only beginningoperations and not working at capacity.
“Although the mill has a design capacity of 21 tons ofyellowcake per year, it has actually operated at much lowerlevels,” Lewis said. “The construction of a much larger pondsuggests Iran is moving toward operating the mill at its designcapacity.”
About half that amount, or 9,000 kilograms of yellowcake,would be needed to produce the 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of 93percent enriched uranium required for a weapon, according to theverification center.
History of Concealment
The satellite photos, while showing that Iran is ramping upcapacity, can’t pinpoint the amount of uranium being produced,the analysts said. Inspections would be needed to find out howclose to production capacity Iran is at the mine.
“Given Iran’s history of concealing nuclear facilities, aneffective safeguards regime needs to cover all of Iran’s nuclearactivities from the moment the ore comes out of the earth atBandar Abbas and elsewhere,” Lewis said.
An IAEA agreement with Iran, which allows inspection ofdeclared nuclear sites such as Natanz and Esfahan, located about340 kilometers south of Tehran, doesn’t extend to miningoperations.
Inspectors gained some access to Gchine from 2003 until2006, when Iran stopped complying with an IAEA agreement thatallowed for more stringent investigations. President MahmoudAhmadinejad ceased Iran’s cooperation with the so-calledAdditional Protocol in 2006 in retaliation for the IAEA’sreferral of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear work to the SecurityCouncil.
Heavy-Water Reactor
The agency has repeatedly requested more access to the mineas well as other sites involved in Iran’s atomic work, mostrecently in a Sept. 9 report.
The Additional Protocol, created in 1997 after thediscovery that Iraq and North Korea had atomic programs, wouldgive inspectors access to places beyond Gchine, such as anincomplete heavy-water reactor in Arak, 240 kilometers south ofTehran, and plants that make centrifuges used in uraniumenrichment. Inspectors would also be allowed to take water andsoil samples and talk with key figures in Iran’s nuclearprogram.
What the international community “would like to know nowis where all that uranium yellowcake is going,” Andreas Persbo,executive director of the verification institute, said in anOct. 21 interview.
Chain Reaction
Two of the four analysts who examined the satellite imagesand confirmed the production increase declined to be identifiedbecause they aren’t authorized to speak publicly on the issue.The two satellite image companies regularly take pictures ofcountries such as Iran and sell the photographs to interestedgovernments and scientists.
Inspectors don’t know whether all of the mine’s output isgoing to Esfahan for conversion, whether some is beingstockpiled at the mine or whether it is being secretlytransferred to an undeclared site, said Persbo. Iran hasn’treported details of the output.
At the conversion stage, yellowcake is turned into uraniumhexafluoride gas. It is then transported in casks to Natanz,where centrifuges isolate the uranium-235 isotope used in anuclear chain reaction.
Iran could produce a warhead without the IAEA’s knowledgeif secret facilities to convert and enrich the uranium mined atGchine were used, according to the analysts.
Underground Facility
Iran told the IAEA about a previously secret undergroundenrichment plant, called Fordo, some 160 kilometers south ofTehran, in September. IAEA inspectors undertook a four-day visitto the site and will report their findings to the organization’s35-member board of governors.
Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Aliasghar Soltanieh, whenreached by telephone yesterday, wouldn’t confirm that productionhad increased at Gchine or comment on whether the country wouldsubmit to wider inspections.
The IAEA declined to comment on the satellite photographs.U.S. diplomats also declined to comment and referred BloombergNews to an Oct. 21 speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency doesn’t have thetools or authority to carry out its mission effectively,”Clinton said in the Washington speech. “We saw this in theinstitution’s failure to detect Iran’s covert enrichmentplant.”
To contact the reporter on this story:Jonathan Tirone at jtirone@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 3, 2009 19:00 ESTSource: Bloomberg
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