IAEA report leads to press confusion over Iranian nuclear program

“Iran has enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb if it decides to take the drastic steps of violating its international treaty obligations, kicking out inspectors and further refining its supply.”

However, as Chemist Cheryl Rofer points out , at 3.49% , the concentration of Iran’s 1010 kg of enriched uranium-235 is still too low to make an atomic bomb and would have to be reprocessed for a number of months to reach the necessary enrichment level for military applications. The uranium enrichment facility would also have to be reconfigured to reach higher concentration levels of U-235.

An atomic bomb requires highly enriched uranium-235 at greater than 90% concentration. To produce enough low-enriched uranium fuel for the two nuclear reactors Iran is building it needs at minimum a cascade of 5000 centrifuges. Iran currently has 5600 known centrifuges according to the IAEA report.

The report also states that Iran has slowed down its enrichment program and that as long as the IAEA monitors their facilities, they cannot develop nuclear weapons. As IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei recently said in an interview in Süddeutsche Zeitung , “they still do not have the ingredients to make a bomb overnight.”

Related coverage
Iran holds enough uranium for bomb Financial Times
Iran has enriched enough uranium to make bomb, IAEA says The Guardian
Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought The New York Times

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