Thursday, April 9, 2009
Hillary Clinton's assessment seems a little off on Iran
"There is nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon." That is a quote from Secretary Clinton in article from Jerusalem Post today. Your humble nuclear.com editor disagrees with her take. It's not the trying that's most important, it's the succeeding.
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Today was 'Nuclear Technology Day' in Iran. President Ahmadinejad announced two advances -- Iran has mastered the fabrication of fuel pellets for the heavy water reactor at Arak, and two new types of centrifuges have been tested "with a capacity a few times higher than the existing centrifuges.
ReplyDeleteThe new centrifuges could reduce the time needed for Iran to produce uranium-based nuclear weapons. The Arak reactor, which can be used to produce plutonium for a separate type of nuclear weapon, is not expected to become operational for at least three years.
An Iranian nuclear official announced that 7,000 enrichment centrifuges are now running at Natanz. That is 1,000 more than previously reported. The last mention by IAEA on the subject, in a mid-February report, was that Iran was operating about 4,000 centrifuges at Natanz with another 1,500 centrifuges being tested.
ReplyDeleteSecretary Clinton had this to say: "We don't know what to believe about the Iranian program. We've heard many different assessments and claims over a number of years. One of the reasons we are participating in the P-Five-Plus-One is to enforce the international obligations that Iran should be meeting to insure that the IAEA is the source of credible information, because there is a great gap between what the IAEA observed about six or seven weeks ago, and what the Iranians are now claiming."