The head of Iran's nuclear program announced today that international inspectors will get a peek inside the Islamic Republic's secret enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom. Cool! We'll we finally learn the secret of Iran's nuclear intentions, right?
Not exactly. Here's what we know so far, courtesy of a nice roundup by the Federation of American Scientists. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that it has received a formal letter from the Iranian government announcing the facility's existence. Excellent! But IAEA inspectors have yet to scout the place, so we can only guess about the number and type of centrifuges that will be installed there. Bummer! So in the meanwhile, we'll have to content ourselves with satellite imagery (thanks, ISIS!) or scroll around on Google Earth looking for signs of recent excavation, and take educated guesses about what the floor plan of the place is. (The White House says it's built for 3,000 centrifuges; Iran claims it has not installed any machinery there yet).
So let's say the inspectors pay a visit. Will they be able to give us a definitive answer on Iran's nuclear intentions? Once again, the answer is: Ummm, maybe. As the Federation's Ivanka Barzashka writes, the size and layout a facility does not necessarily tell us whether it can or cannot be used to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU, that is, weapons-grade) or low-enriched uranium suitable for reactor fuel. "Both enrichment to a low degree for a nuclear reactor and to a high degree for a nuclear weapon are done by gas centrifuges, in fact, potentially exactly the same machines," she notes. Damn!
But they may be able to offer some clues. Read further:
"One way to tell whether a cascade of centrifuges is used for LEU (low-enriched uranium) or HEU production is to look at the configuration of the machines, or how they are piped together," she writes. "The set up and piping of the cascade will be different if they are enriching natural uranium to low-enriched uranium when compared to natural uranium to HEU."
Aha! But again, that doesn't give a definitive answer: The Iranians can always pump LEU through the cascades several times until they get HEU. Damn you, ambivalent-relationship-between-nuclear-power-and-nuclear-weaponry! And even if they do grant full access to the place, our own Jeffrey Lewis writes, "They will probably start digging another hole in the ground someplace else — assuming they weren’t digging multiple facilities. Welcome to enrichment whack-a-mole where, if you miss, Iran gets the bomb."
[Photo: President.ir]
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