In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Iran's march towards becoming a nuclear power is as much about national pride and international standing as it is about meeting it's energy and security needs.

Money is a sign of Poverty - Culture Saying

Your proposal is indeed reasonable, but I see the following obstacles:

• if Iran wants the bomb, or wants the ambiguity of not giving it up (as dissuasion against aggressive Americans), then this proposal will not interest them. There thus is an additional requirement for a real peae treaty between the Us and Iran, and that will probably drag the Israel/Palestine situation in

• the French, the Russians and the Americans will bicker on which civilian technology to provide (and who will provide it) - and that's enough to kill a deal

• Iranians feel they can get away with their current toughness and, in the current oil situation, they are right.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The diagram Jerome posted certainly implies that this may not even be technically feasible, never mind the political feasibility.

And they've already rejected the Russian offer of the next best thing, to be provided the fuel without the processing infrastructure.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Not sure how real this is as news, or how much this has been "suggested" to the NYT, but there it is:

In Iran, Dissenting Voices Rise on Its Leaders' Nuclear Strategy (NYT)

TEHRAN, March 14 -- Just weeks ago, the Iranian government's combative approach toward building a nuclear program produced rare public displays of unity here. Now, while the top leaders remain resolute in their course, cracks are opening both inside and outside the circles of power over the issue.

Some people in powerful positions have begun to insist that the confrontational tactics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been backfiring, making it harder instead of easier for Iran to develop a nuclear program.

This week, the United Nations Security Council is meeting to take up the Iranian nuclear program. That referral and, perhaps more important, Iran's inability so far to win Russia's unequivocal support for its plans have empowered critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad, according to political analysts with close ties to the government.

One senior Iranian official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue, said: "I tell you, if what they were doing was working, we would say, 'Good.' " But, he added: "For 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that."

Note that "27 year" reference which dovetails nicely with my own comment above that the underlying issue is the "wimpy 70s", including Carter, the oil crisis and the hostage crisis...

As to the rest, it's very much plausible, but as it's become impossible to know the intentions of the NYT on sush issues these days, I don't know what to make of it.

It does sound like "see, we're right to be tough, the Iranians will blink first".

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Why is it that I'm always swamped by work when there are interesting discussions on Eurotrib? Murphy's Law or something ...

I don't have time to engage in a discussion so I'm just going to state my position and leave it at that.

As for most political problems, there is no technological foolproof fix to this issue.

If you want to solve the narrow issue of Iran (and Iran-like countries) access to nuclear energy, the solution is mostly political:

1. Give those countries satisfactory access to PWR and BWR reactors and to the technology required to maintain them.
2. Obtain that those countries renounce completely any form of fuel cycle technology. They must renounce to:
   • Upstream technology for manufacturing fresh fuel : uranium mining, extraction, transformation, enrichment and assembly
   • Downstream technology for handling spent fuel : reprocessing, recycling and waste separation and storage.
   • Ancillary technologies such as tritium recovery, etc.
3. As the trade-off for point 2, guarantee to those countries access at competitive costs to ready-to-use fresh fuel and prompt removal and disposition of spent fuel.
4. No exit clause without returning all the fuel elements and dismantling the reactors.

Some quick and incomplete explanations for that position. I assume the risk is a clandestine program piggybacking the official program. If a country signs an agreement as above and then reneges on it, it's a different story and the remedy can be legitimately very harsh.

Point 1:

There are 3 technologies tracks currently available for nuclear power plants with satisfactory production and safety track records: CANDU, PWR and BWR.

None of those reactors require uranium enriched above 6% U235 so the primary fuel is unsuitable for weapons: at the very least 20% U235 and for practical weapons at least 80% U235 and preferably 98.5% U235 or better. For borderline countries (that we don't fully trust but we don't fully distrust either), it may even make sense to let them access MOX fuel (plutonium) with high even isotopes content (at least 35% Pu238, Pu240 and Pu242). That type of plutonium is not fully proliferation-proof but it's not directly suitable for weapons either (there is a caveat, see below).

CANDU reactors are excellent reactors for fuel, very efficient with fissile materials and incredibly flexible with fuel types. Their remarkable qualities also make them the absolute proliferation nightmare. Fabulous reactors for producing weapon-grade plutonium and they can even run on natural uranium. Their continuous loading capacity requires inspector presence on site on a 24/7 basis and allows for easy cheating with fuel burn-up levels. In a large production environment, it's probably very easy to slip out-of-inventory fuel elements in the cycle (in particular, loaded with natural uranium). The large number of discrete fuel assemblies required per reactor (~5,000 bundles for a 640 MWe reactor) makes inventory control potentially difficult and embezzlement of spent fuel pretty easy.

High power CANDU reactors MUST NOT be made available to suspect countries.

PWR and BWR are a pretty different story. As the whole core is operating under very high pressure, PWR and BWR do not support continuous loading and must be completely stopped and the core vessel fully opened to manipulate the fuel : typically a refueling takes 30 or 40 days between two 9 to 18 months "campaigns" of continuous operation. So, it is much easier to monitor the fuel manipulation and to detect unauthorized opening of the core. Inventory control is also much easier as the number of discrete fuel assemblies in a reactor is much smaller (241 assemblies in a 1600 MWe EPR) and only 1/3 or 1/4 of the assemblies are actually replaced per cycle. The inventory in the cooling pools can also be kept pretty low at less than a full reactor load. Finally, the latest PWR and BWR designs authorize very high burn-up levels (more than 70,000 MWd/t for EPR) so the plutonium in the spent fuel is heavily contaminated with even isotopes (about 39% Pu238/Pu240/Pu242 for 60,000 MWd/t fuel burnt) and is not directly suitable for weapons.

The proliferation danger from large PWR or BWR plants is rather low. The fresh fuel is unsuitable for uranium weapons and the spent fuel is also unsuitable for plutonium weapons. The only inventory with suitable plutonium is inside the core and very hard to manipulate without being noticed. Also, those are very powerful reactors so the number of sites to monitor is pretty small.

Other realistic technologies, deployable in the next 10 years, are not bringing anything valuable in term of non-proliferation:

The much vaunted PBMRs are a nightmare for fuel inventory and control (360,000 elements for a 100 MWe reactor ??? 350 elements discarded each day and same amount injected) and as it is a continuously loading reactor, it's very easy to mess with fuel burn-up to obtain good plutonium and it requires 24/7 monitoring. Given the huge bulk of manipulated fuel, embezzlement is likely to be easy. Also the pebble elements are not doing anything against proliferation, no matter what the PBMR proponents pretend. They are just more expansive to reprocess than buying fresh uranium but it's easy to crush the pebbles open and recover the fuel kernels (especially, if you are not preoccupied with environmental concerns, simple high temperature charring under pure oxygen will do). A distributed implantation of those small reactors would also multiply the number of sites to monitor.

Fast neutrons reactors, with their high neutron flux and their breeding capacity, are of course a complete no-no for suspect countries.

Point 2:

Both the upstream and downstream fuel cycle technologies have very high proliferation potential.

Upstream, the enrichment capacity required for the yearly refueling of a 1000 MWe PWR or BWR is at least 100 tSWU/yr. By using a slight tweaking of the UF6 flows in the cascade and two recirculations, the same 100 tSWU/yr centrifuge cascade system can also produce 576 kg of high weapon grade HEU (98.5%) with the same initial feed (225 t of natural uranium, but using a more wasteful 0.46% tail assay rather than a 0.35% tail assay). That's enough for building 23 weapons per year using a moderately sophisticated implosion assembly (25 kg HEU per weapon) or 36 high-tech weapons (16 kg/ HEU per weapon). It's very difficult to detect, would require 24/7 monitoring and the cascade doesn't even need to be stopped or seriously reconfigured to do the recirculation. It seems that Pakistan built its nuclear arsenal with a total separative capacity of just a few tSWU/yr so with 100 tSWU/yr ...

Downstream technology for recycling involves fuel reprocessing and uranium and plutonium separation. If the plutonium is heavily spiked with even isotopes, it is not directly suitable for weaponization (unstable weapon, very high radiations, very high risk of pre-ignition (dudes and accidents)). But the same installations could be used to separate weapon grade plutonium from a clandestine low burn-up reactor running on easily acquired natural uranium (heavy water or graphite moderator). The telltale gas emissions of this activity would be masked by those of the civilian activities.

That being said, for a country that also has upstream technology, centrifuge cascades can also be used to isolate Pu239 from reactor grade plutonium. The technology would similar (transformation to hexafluoride and centrifugation) but some parameters are very different:

1. The difference in isotopic weight is much lower so the separation is far less efficient.
2. The manipulated quantities are small, a few hundreds kilograms to a few tons.
3. The concentration in the desirable Pu239 isotope is much higher in the initial feed so the need for separation power is lower, compensating 1) somewhat.
4. The critical mass for plutonium is much lower than for uranium and the initial feed is highly radioactive so specific precautions would be required to shield the cascade, special radiation-hardened control electronics would required and the centrifuges would need to be dimensioned and configured so the process mass remains safely much below critical mass/density.

It is theoretically possible but it has never been done on a large scale as far as I know.

Now, how do you explain point 2 to the target countries? A big stick and point 3 may work. Otherwise, I don't know.

Point 3:

That's the highly political one.

1. How do you convince suspect countries, such as Iran, that their access to fresh fuel is safe and beyond the influence?
   
2. How do you convince a safe country that it should accept spent fuel (and then own it) from the suspect countries?
   

The second issue is not an easy one but I'm pretty sure French or Russian politicians would be able to convince their constituents that it's ok to shoulder someone's else wastes if it makes the world safer. Especially as reprocessing (used by both countries) makes the wastes much easier to manage.

The first issue is the tough one. I'm not a shill for the mullahs but you must accept that their paranoia toward international laws and treaties is not completely without grounds. Promises only bind those who believe in them and countries like the US have not made them any more credible lately. So what structure would work? An extra-territorial/supra-national version of URENCO with its own mines and facilities under IAEA supervision? May be ...


PS: By the way, I don't think this above is actually the solution. The issue and the right approach are, in my opinion much broader. It's about turning Iran in a liberal democracy (just NOT the GWB way) and in that case, I don't really mind if a democratic Iran has nukes.

Interesting article: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC17Ak02.html

The referal of Iran's file the the UN Sec Counsel was legally unjustified. The demands that Iran sign the Additional Protocol and the demand that Iran implement "transparency measures" that go beyond Additional Protocol are legally unjustified. The sanctions on Iran's nuclear program which forced Iran to seek out technology from Pakistan was legally unjustified. Barring Iran from obtaining enriched fuel from EURODIF even though Iran was a shareholder in that company was legally unjustified. Ignporing that Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which recognizes Iran's inalienable right to civilian nuclear technology ) is legally unjustified....

In light of all this, why should Iran trust anything that the Russians or the EU promise Iran?