As a side note, reactor grade plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons, albeit the case that weapons manufacture using reactor grade plutonium is more difficult and dangerous compared to weapon grade plutonium.
For weapons manufacture, the ideal plutonium contains a very high proportion of plutonium-239. As neutron irradiation of uranium-238 proceeds, the greater the quantity of isotopes such as plutonium-240, plutonium-241, plutonium-242 and americium-241, and the greater the quantity of plutonium-238 formed (indirectly) from uranium-235. These unwanted isotopes make it more difficult and dangerous to produce nuclear weapons.
Definitions of plutonium usually refer to the level of the unwanted plutonium-240 isotope:
(2) Fuel grade plutonium contains 7-18% plutonium-240
(3) Reactor grade plutonium contains over 18% plutonium-240.
Nuclear power reactors can of course be operated on a much shorter than usual irradiation cycle in order to produce large quantities of weapon grade and/or fuel grade plutonium for use in weapons. It is sometimes argued that short irradiation times would adversely effect the commercial operation of a power reactor, but that would probably be of minimal concern to a would-be proliferator.
During a normal reactor operating cycle (in which fuel typically remains in the reactor for 3-4 years), a large majority of the plutonium formed is reactor grade. However, the grade of the plutonium varies depending on the position of the particular fuel elements in the reactor. Carlson et al. (1997) note that: "Even though fuel assemblies are moved around during refuelling, some parts of fuel rods will have a plutonium isotope composition closer to that of [weapon grade plutonium]. Fuel grade plutonium is produced in some nuclear reactors. It is often produced in tritium production reactors, and can also be produced in power reactors in initial core loads and in damaged fuel discharged from the reactor earlier than normal (Carlson et al., 1997).Carlson et al. (1997) note the normal operation of on-load refuelling reactors (eg certain gas-graphite and heavy water reactors) can result in some low burn-up plutonium.The development of fast breeder technology has the potential to result in large-scale production of weapon grade plutonium (Carlson et al., 1997).Carlson et al. (1997) note that at least five tonnes of civil plutonium under IAEA safeguards is in the upper range of fuel grade plutonium or weapon grade plutonium. There is general agreement that reactor grade plutonium can be used to produce weapons, though the process is more difficult and dangerous than the use of weapon grade plutonium (see Gorwitz, 1998 for discussion and references).
Carlson, J., J. Bardsley, V. Bragin and J. Hill (Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office), "Plutonium isotopics - non-proliferation and safeguards issues", Paper presented to the IAEA Symposium on International Safeguards, Vienna, Austria, 13-17 October, 1997, www.asno.dfat.gov.au o_9705.html
Carson Mark, J., 1993, "Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium", ccnr.org findings_plute.html.
Gorwitz, Mark, 1996, "The Plutonium Special Isotope Separation Program: An Open Literature Analysis".
Gorwitz, Mark, 1998, "Foreign Assistance to Iran's Nuclear and Missile Programs", www.globalsecurity.org wmd library report 1998 iran-fa.htm. See Appendix A and references.
www.globalsecurity.org ccnr.org www.asno.dfat.gov.au
Russia makes 1st nuke shipment to Iran
By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 24 minutes ago
Russia has made its first shipment of nuclear fuel to an Iranian nuclear power plant at the center of the international tensions over Tehran's atomic program, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
The United States said the Russian delivery gave Iran another reason to suspend its enrichment program.
The U.S. has been unhappy about Russia helping Iran build the Bushehr nuclear plant. But President Bush has supported Russia in providing uranium fuel to Iran — but only if Moscow retrieves the used reactor fuel for reprocessing.
Iran contends the plant is strictly for civilian purposes, but critics say it could be used to advance efforts to build nuclear weapons.
The construction of the Bushehr plant has been frequently delayed. Officials said the delays were due to payment disputes, but many observers suggested Russia also was unhappy with Iran's resistance to international pressure to make its nuclear program more open and to assure the international community that it was not developing nuclear arms.
Russia announced last week that its construction disputes with Iran had been resolved and said fuel deliveries would begin about a half year before Bushehr was expected to go into service.
"All fuel that will be delivered will be under the control and guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the whole time it stays on Iranian territory," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Moreover, the Iranian side gave additional written guarantees that the fuel will be used only for the Bushehr nuclear power plant."
Iran confirmed that it had received the shipment, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
"The first nuclear fuel shipment for the Bushehr atomic power plant arrived in Iran Monday," IRNA quoted Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh as saying.
The 2005 agreement under which Russia agreed to supply nuclear fuel for Bushehr included a clause that requires Iran to return the spent fuel to prevent any possibility Tehran would extract plutonium from it to make atomic weapons.
Aghazadeh said the Bushehr plant was 95 percent complete and would begin operations "next year." He indicated the reactor needed 80 tons of nuclear fuel during the initial phase of operation, but did not provide further details.
The U.S. has been pushing the U.N. Security Council to pass a third round of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
"This fuel shipment gives the Iranians one more reason to suspend their enrichment program," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "If they're getting fuels from the Russians now, Iran doesn't need its own program."
[ERIC]: And has been obviously stated above and in previous articles, turning reactor fuel into weapons grade material is not difficult. Building the detonator is not terribly difficult. Enriching material in centrifuges is difficult.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino noted the Russian said the IAEA "will be involved in this transaction. So that is a step — I would say a good step in that direction."
The American effort became more difficult earlier this month with the release of a new U.S. intelligence report that concluded Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and had not resumed it through at least the middle of this year.
Although Russia has resisted drives to impose sanctions on Iran, it also repeatedly has urged Tehran to cooperate with the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA to resolve concerns over the nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underlined that position last week after a meeting in Moscow with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki.
Officials at Atomstroyexport, the Russian contractor for Bushehr, raised the prospect last week of creating a Russian-Iranian joint venture "to ensure security" at the Bushehr plant, according to the RIA-Novosti agency.
[ERIC]: Suicide. Ignorance. Anyone buying into that is an idiot. Sorry, but it is the truth.
That could indicate Russian interest in ensuring that enriched uranium at the plant is not stolen or diverted. Depleted fuel rods also could be reprocessed into plutonium.
___
Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.
A DANGEROUS WORLD
Stupid Intelligence on IranIf Tehran did slow its weapons program, Bush policies probably had something to do with it.
BY JAMES SCHLESINGER
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The release earlier this month of "key judgments" from the National Intelligence Estimate--including the bald assertion "that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program"--has caused both astonishment here at home and consternation overseas, where it has resulted in confusion about America's policy goals and steadiness.
Let us stipulate that the intelligence community has acquired evidence sufficiently persuasive to lead it to reverse its prior judgment that Iran was hard at work developing nuclear weapons. For that it has been praised, particularly in traditional intelligence quarters, for "speaking truth to power," and thereby dissipating some of the distrust generated by its faulty earlier judgments on Iraq.
The NIE's about-face on Iran's nuclear weapons program represents a reversion to an earlier style of intelligence analysis--featuring a renewed determination not to get beyond the "hard evidence." But as we shall see, this has led to a decision not to consider several crucial elements that lay behind the presumed 2003 decision in Tehran.
Clearly, the key judgments in the NIE were overstated. And that, in turn, may reflect the very late decision to declassify the key judgments, written in a kind of shorthand, and thus incautiously phrased.
The crucial decision, hidden in a footnote, was to define the "nuclear weapons program" which had been halted to mean only "Iran's weapon design and weaponization work and covert . . . uranium enrichment-related work." Thus it excludes Iran's overt enrichment program monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
[ERIC]: Apparently, the intelligence analyst were expecting those in the media to "connect-the-dots" and correctly render their report in a correct light.
We have long understood that the production of fissile material, whether overt or covert, remains "the long pole in the tent" in the development of a nuclear capability. Thus the NIE defines away what has been the main element stirring international alarm regarding Iran's nuclear activity.
Yesterday Tehran announced its Bushehr nuclear power plant will be operating at full capacity by the end of next year. Yet even though Russia supplied the nuclear fuel for Bushehr, the Iranians insist on maintaining their "civilian" uranium-enrichment program. Weapon design and weaponization, at least for the simpler weapons, is a far less demanding and less time-consuming task than uranium enrichment.Let us examine what else has not been considered. The NIE asserts "that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure" and that "indicates that Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach." Now what might have constituted the principal elements in that "international pressure" to induce Tehran, at least temporarily, to halt its covert weaponization program?
• The American invasion of Iraq, resulting in the seizure of Baghdad in 10 days time--something that had widely been suggested could not be accomplished.
• The earlier destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, another display of American military prowess.
• The decision of Col. Moammar Gadhafi to abandon his nuclear program and to renounce and make amends for terrorism.
• The exposure and partial demolition of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology network, Khan's confession and his confinement by the Pakistani government to his home.
Does it not seem likely that Tehran took notice of these events, and may have been intimidated by them into more circumspect behavior? The NIE argues that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach." Given those successful American actions, those who guide decisions in Iran may well have decided that the potential costs of being caught with a clandestine program had risen sharply, and that the presumed benefits of early clandestine weaponization efforts could safely be deferred.
In brief, since the "long pole in the tent" remains the production of fissile material, Iran likely decided that the prudent course of action was to pursue an open enrichment program ostensibly to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. It is a course that had been chartered by North Korea--and arguably was legitimate under the Nonproliferation Treaty. This central path to obtaining fissile material--the focus of international concern--has been treated in the NIE as quite distinct from the "nuclear weapons program."
Still, the achievements of American arms and American policy during that period were undoubtedly noted in Tehran. Why not mention them in the NIE as possibly influencing Tehran's decision in 2003?
The answer, in brief, is that it would have been speculative and in violation of the renewed commitment of the intelligence community to stick to the "hard evidence." There was no intercept; there was no agent's report that such calculations were, indeed, the source of Iran's switch. So in order to avoid the kind of speculation that had gotten the intelligence community into trouble in its judgments regarding Iraq, these realities were left up to the imagination of others and the intelligence community stuck to what it had evidence for.
What was obvious about events in and around 2003 should have been obvious at least to the American media. The media, Lord knows, have no inhibitions about engaging in speculation or urging us to "connect the dots," or feeling any obligation to limit themselves to hard evidence. The NIE almost begged for others to follow up on the nature of "international pressure" and the calculations behind Iran's "cost-benefit approach."
But the American media today almost reflexively treat any development as a setback for the administration of George W. Bush. So, the media quite clearly ignored the obvious: that a surprising decision by Tehran in 2003 to halt the covert weaponization effort likely was a tribute to the successes of American policy and arms during that period. Thus, administration policies and actions that likely induced caution in Tehran could be characterized, ironically enough, as an administration defeat.
Little more need be said about the process by which what might have been heralded as a victory was transformed into a defeat and echoed overseas. But a few words do need to be added about the intelligence community's decision to restrict its key judgments to "hard evidence." Many in the intelligence community embrace this as a return to virtue. Yet in itself it has severe drawbacks. As in this case, reading the key judgments may now require something akin to Cliffs Notes listing other relevant events and considerations that may be necessary in interpreting an Estimate limited to the hard evidence.
Exclusive reliance on hard evidence not infrequently results in deliberately blinding oneself to the most obvious explanation of what has occurred. The classic example of this failing occurred during the Vietnam War, when intelligence analysts stubbornly refused to accept that enemy supplies were pouring through Sihanoukville ostensibly on the grounds that there was no hard evidence. (Actually, there was an agent's report that revealed the activity, but it was dismissed as insufficient.) Intelligence based on hard evidence requires supplementation by other forms of intelligence.
"Failures of imagination," to which the 9-11 Commission referred, can come in a variety of modes.
Mr. Schlesinger is a former secretary of defense, secretary of energy and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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