WTFMP?

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Can the “Esfahan FMP”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1982/more-about-irans-fmp make fuel for the Russian-made Bushehr light-water reactor, in the “unlikely”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1926/skepsis “event”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1959/dept-of-media-criticism that Russia were to cease supplying fresh fuel?

Deep in the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2225/irans-equinox-fmp-comes-online#comment, Harvard’s Matt Bunn says no:

bq. It’s highly unlikely that the Iranian statement that the plant can make fuel for Bushehr is correct. Making fuel for any particular reactor design requires knowledge of a bunch of fuel design details specific to that reactor design, which is typically proprietary. Iranian experts have told me that they originally expected Russia to license the fuel manufacturing technology to them for the VVER-1000 design at Bushehr, but Russia has refused to do so (preferring to keep the leash on Iran’s fuel supply in its own hands). Iran could potentially design and make unlicensed fuel for the reactor, but this could raise serious safety issues, and would certainly void any guarantees from Russia that Iran may have received regarding the safety and performance of the reactor. My guess is that they will be stuck relying on Russian fuel for years to come — which, of course, makes the argument that they need Natanz to ensure reliability of fuel supply very weak.

Somebody should tell Deputy AEOI chief Mohammed Saeedi, who in “recent televised comments”:http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8801231309, appeared to be saying that Iran could supply its own fuel for Bushehr. As if dreaming up some other purpose for indigenous LWR fuel, he also threw in this creative idea:

bq. He further pointed out that Iran could mull over plans to export nuclear fuel, saying that the move is allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rules and regulations.

I say go for it. Any number of Western governments stand ready to buy at a premium!

Update: Tongue out of cheek for just a moment, Iranian nuclear exports are forbidden by “UNSCR 1737”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/unsc_res1737-2006.pdf (2006). See numbered paragraph 7 at the top of page 4. This is probably why Saeedi pointedly refers to the NPT; lately, Iranian officials have decided that the NPT is valid and legitimate, but the decisions of the Security Council are not. Good to know, right?

And if you were wondering about that indigenous reactor, it’s still out there on the horizon somewhere:

Elsewhere, Saeedi announced that Tehran has successfully completed the preliminary designing of a 360-megawatt light-water reactor in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn.

“Now we are in the conceptual planning of the reactor and preparing the specified site for Darkhoveyn (nuclear plant),” the Iranian official underlined.

But that’s a mere detail. Don’t let that stop you from making LWR fuel as soon as possible, AEOI. The completed assemblies will be a hit on the 4th annual National Nuclear Technology Day.

The Black Bellows

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An alert TW reader “points out”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1976/the-festival-of-unenriched-fuel#comment that, as anticipated, there was a “centrifuge-related announcement”:http://en.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1315373&Lang=E on Iran’s 3rd National Nuclear Technology Day:

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Thursday on the occasion of the 4th [sic] national day of nuclear technology that the country has tested two types of new high-capacity centrifuges.

The Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said that the centrifuges were 5 to 6 times faster than the older ones. He gave no further details.

Some of us have been waiting for this announcement more or less since _last year’s_ NNTD, or before. You might recall a certain “open-source intel bonanza”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1849/ir-2s-on-display right around then. There was an odd, unresolved detail in Jeff’s analysis:

!http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/images/1082.jpg!

[snip]

The picture also contains a hand holding what looks, to me at least, like it might, might be a carbon fiber bellows — although I don’t have any reference images to compare.

A bellows, if you don’t know already, is a short cylinder meant to connect two lengths of rotor in a centrifuge. A notch (or “crimp”) allows the entire assemblage to withstand otherwise destructive vibrations when accelerating to (or decelerating from) operational speeds.

The IR-2 and IR-3 machines — prototype devices first mentioned in IAEA reports in “Feb. 2008”:http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Report_22Feb2008.pdf and “May 2008”:http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/IAEA_Iran_Report_26May2008.pdf, respectively — are said to have one rotor each. But there were “too many pictures”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1849/ir-2s-on-display from last NNTD seeming to depict “multi-rotor”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1851/iran-centrifuge-components machines — either disassembled or partly assembled — not to wonder.

One possible answer: because newer, multi-rotor centrifuge models were still to be fully assembled and tested. Seizing on key details in the Feb. 2008 IAEA report, plus the same mystery photo at the top of this post, ISIS flagged this possibility back in “May 2008”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_Iran_IAEA_Report_29May2008.pdf:

According to the February 2007 [sic] IAEA safeguards report, inspectors visiting Kalaye Electric were given information on four different centrifuge designs, including two subcritical rotor designs, one or more supercritical rotor designs with bellows, and a more advanced centrifuge, which is undefined in the report. The IR-2 and IR-3 are the two subcritical centrifuges. The IR-2 is an experimental model that contains a single composite rotor made from carbon fibers. The other parts of the rotor assembly are modified P-2 components (see figure 1). The IR-3 is an experimental model that seeks to increase the enrichment output by increasing the centrifuge’s length somewhat and by varying the cooling of the centrifuge rotor (see figure 2).

[snip]

Although not mentioned in the [May 2008 IAEA] report, there appears to be a third advanced centrifuge at the pilot plant. It appears to have the same diameter as the IR-2 and IR-3 but to have double or triple the length of the IR-2. Thus, it would hold two or three rotor tubes, connected by bellows (see figure 5). Prior to Iran’s suspension of the Additional Protocol in 2006, Iranian officials told the IAEA they could not make P-2 bellows. Iran has apparently overcome this obstacle (see figure 6).

(Thanks to Paul for pointing this out.)

Information has been leaking out around the edges. The AP’s George Jahn “mentioned the IR-4”:http://www.iranfocus.com/en/nuclear/diplomats-iran-seeks-to-buy-banned-carbon-fiber-17389.html last month in a story about carbon-fiber importation. (Does this mean that the mysterious fourth new centrifuge doesn’t use carbon fiber? I suspect we’ll learn soon.)

And now the NCRI has “told the WSJ”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123928982470105267.html that the new machines are “being assembled” in the basement of a “reception center” at Natanz. Too bad they weren’t exhibited to the press this year.

Update: Back in February, the AEOI’s Agazadeh said that new-generation centrifuges would soon be installed at Natanz, as “Paul has pointed out”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1913/new-iranian-centrifuges-to-be-installed.

Transparency, North Korea-Style

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Former U.S. State Department translator Tong Kim makes a few “pertinent observations”:http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/04/167_42603.html about the recent decline in U.S. access to North Korea, and how it relates to Pyongyang’s special way of doing things:

Beginning January, several groups of private Americans with a varying degree of expertise on North Korea ― including Stephen Bosworth prior to his appointment as the top North Korea policy coordinator ― visited Pyongyang and told the North Koreans about their views of what’s coming from the new administration vis-a-vis North Korea. Their message was the new administration would be serious to resolve the issues of mutual concern bilaterally with Pyongyang and multilaterally through the existing six-party talks.

The North Koreans turned down Ambassador Bosworth’s plan to visit Pyongyang, which was part of his initial consultations with the participants in the multilateral talks for denuclearization. Bosworth’s Asia trip immediately followed Secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to the region, during which she had sent mixed signals to Pyongyang. Although the North did not publicly react to some of the secretary’s displeasing remarks, the North Koreans did not find a clear departure from the Bush Administration’s policy other than a shift in approach ― with the appointment of a senior envoy and giving more weight to direct diplomacy.

Conversely, the North stepped up provocative threats on South Korea and imposed new demands that the United States should treat it as a nuclear weapons state and that it should first normalize its relationship with the DPRK before denuclearization. The North also lowered the level of its interlocutors for most of the American visitors, from vice foreign minister to the director-general of U.S. affairs ― from Kim Gye-gwan to Li Geun.

An aside: Bosworth recently “hinted at this shift”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1947/batman-begins. We continue with Tong Kim:

bq. It is also notable that Pyongyang denied a recent American visitor group access to the Yongbyon nuclear complex: the group included Siegfried Hecker, a well-known nuclear authority, who had visited the site five times before. Hecker’s first visit was allowed because the North wanted to prove its nuclear capability, which was eventually demonstrated by a nuclear test.

Another aside: Prior to the release of the operating records and the start of disablement operations, “SIGINT”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1866/just-a-little-bit-more-information (as in, you know, “Sig” Hecker) was the primary form of transparency at Yongbyon after the collapse of the Agreed Framework.

Tong Kim:

bq. The denial of access does not indicate possible renewed nuclear activity. But the North may want the world to speculate on what is or what is not going on there. Pyongyang knows how to play the cutoff of information to the outside world or the effect of ambiguity to its advantage.

That seems about right.

More About Iran’s FMP

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In case the “pictures”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1981/inside-irans-fmp aren’t enough, here are words to go with.

A number of claims about Iran’s Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP) can be gleaned from the Iranian press. According to “Mehr News”:http://www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=857835:

bq. The FMP will produce 10 tons of nuclear fuel annually to feed the 40-megawatt Arak heavy water reactor and 30 tons for light water reactors such as the Bushehr power plant and other plants that Iran intends to build.

And according to an “earlier ISNA report”:http://isna.ir/Isna/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1307413&Lang=E, there will be multiple process lines to handle the different needs of the LWRs and the Arak HWR:

Solatsana also said all stages for producing nuclear fuel assemblies are carried out by Iranian experts and added Isfahan’s FMP has designed different tablet producing lines for different reactors.

Arak reactor needs 150 nuclear fuel assemblies.

As if to address the concerns raised “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1931/irans-equinox-fuel-manufacturing-plant-comes-online and more lately in the “news media”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1979/pk-in-the-lat, ISNA quotes an “AEOI official”:http://isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1315373&Lang=E, who assures us that, yes, the LEU will be made into LWR fuel:

The deputy head of the organization, Mohammad Saeedi also said Iran’s nuclear advancement serves the nation’s interests and on the other hand allays the West concerns by proving that its uranium enrichment aims to provide fuel for reactors.

Production of nuclear fuel assemblies in Isfahan’s Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP) must have ended the West ambiguities on Iran’s fuel cycle because it showed that the final purpose of Iran’s enrichment activities is to produce fuel assemblies for research and electricity-generating reactors of the country, he added.

We’re all looking forward to that.

Until that day arrives, here’s some recommended reading on the subject from “Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich”:http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/04/1106.php at FAS, plus “Geoff Forden”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2254/on-the-technology-campaign-trail at ACW.

You may also wish to review “our”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1981/inside-irans-fmp “own”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1979/pk-in-the-lat “humble”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1976/the-festival-of-unenriched-fuel “offerings”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1935/another-on-arak “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1933/arakit-aint-no-natanz “at TW”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1931/irans-equinox-fuel-manufacturing-plant-comes-online.

Inside Iran’s FMP

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p{float: center; margin-left:0px;}. !/images/86.jpg!:http://isna.ir/ISNA/PicView.aspx?Pic=Pic-1314002-1&Lang=E

Granted, a fuel fabrication facility is not the sexiest element of the nuclear fuel cycle, but we all thrive on novelty, don’t we? So here, in the tradition of “Iranian National Nuclear Technology Day”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1976/the-festival-of-unenriched-fuel events of years past, is what you’ve been waiting for.

Click on a small image for a larger view.


!http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/87.jpg!:http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/80.jpg !http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/96.jpg!:http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/95.jpg
!http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/91.jpg!:http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/90.jpg !http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/93.jpg!:http://www.totalwonkerr.com/images/92.jpg

Together, the shots above give the best overall view of what appears to be -the main hall of- _one of at least two large halls in_ the Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP). As you can see, there’s still a great deal of open space where equipment has yet to be installed. And “there are”:/images/94.jpg “a number of”:/images/82.jpg “close-up”:/images/83.jpg “shots”:/images/84.jpg “as well”:/images/85.jpg. “This one”:/images/89.jpg looks like an unfinished glovebox, doesn’t it?

In the links above, I’ve singled out pictures that display the installed equipment. So as not to exaggerate my own ability to interpret them, I present them without further comment. Readers are encouraged to dive in.

Of course, that’s not all. Photo collections can be found at IRNA “here”:http://www5.irna.ir/View/FullStory/Photo/?NewsId=427743, “here”:http://www5.irna.ir/View/FullStory/Photo/?NewsId=427775, and “here”:http://www5.irna.ir/NewsMedia/Photo/Larg_Pic/2009%5C4%5C9%5Cimg633749015527343750.jpg. ISNA has pictures “here”:http://isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1314717&Lang=E. A few shots from AP, Reuters, and AFP appear in this “Yahoo! News”:http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090409/481/dc20db4909f94b5c85e8838a10d38eff/ collection. The Presidential website has only some “pictures from the ceremony”:http://president.ir/en/?ArtID=15694.

Update: an “ACW reader”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2255/fmp-comes-alive#comment has flagged “another photo collection”:http://www.farsnews.com/imgrep.php?nn=8801200780, this one from Fars News. The image of the hall now shown in the upper right quadrant, above, is drawn from this collection.

Further update: still more wire photos can be seen at daylife, an “aggregator”:http://www.daylife.com/topic/fuel_manufacturing_plant/photos/1/grid “site”:http://www.daylife.com/topic/fuel_manufacturing_plant/photos/2/grid. Of special interest is this Reuters “shot of a control panel”:http://www.daylife.com/photo/04kr0eMgIi5KD?q=fuel+manufacturing+plant.

Knock yourselves out, folks!

Department of Awesome Predictions on N Korea

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Remember the Rumsfeld Commission “report”:http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/bm-threat.htm from almost 11 years ago?

This was great:

bq. There is evidence that North Korea is working hard on the Taepo Dong 2 (TD-2) ballistic missile. The status of the system’s development cannot be determined precisely. Nevertheless, the ballistic missile test infrastructure in North Korea is well developed. Once the system is assessed to be ready, *a test flight could be conducted within six months of a decision to do so. If North Korea judged the test to be a success, the TD-2 could be deployed rapidly. It is unlikely the U.S. would know of such a decision much before the missile was launched. This missile could reach major cities and military bases in Alaska and the smaller, westernmost islands in the Hawaiian chain. Light-weight variations of the TD-2 could fly as far as 10,000 km, placing at risk western U.S. territory in an arc extending northwest from Phoenix, Arizona, to Madison, Wisconsin.* These variants of the TD-2 would require additional time to develop and would likely require an additional flight test.

Even better:

bq. A new strategic environment now gives emerging ballistic missile powers the capacity, through a combination of domestic development and foreign assistance, to acquire the means to strike the U.S. within *about five years* of a decision to acquire such a capability.

“Slap of reality.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1968/unha-2td-2-launch-epic-fail

PK in the LAT

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Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim quoted me in the “LAT:”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear10-2009apr10,0,6613541.story

Turning its low-enriched uranium into reactor fuel could reassure the West that Iran has no intention of further refining its stockpile. But plutonium extracted from the spent fuel from Arak could be used for a bomb. That’s only if Iran were to build a reprocessing facility, which it says it won’t do.

“They don’t have one and say they’re not interested in one,” said Paul Kerr, an arms control expert at the Congressional Research Service. “*The reactor is under safeguard. They can’t [create weapons-grade plutonium] without getting caught.”*

Overall, it’s a good story, but I feel the need to point out that it is more accurate to say that the reactor “will be under safeguards” or is “subject to safeguards.”

Heavy Metal Name Diagram

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Since Josh has “left this blog to me”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1977/let-them-eat-rockets for an undetermined period, you get a silly diagram, courtesy of FoKerr _SLK_

!/images/79.jpg!

You can download the large version “here.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/file_download/21

Let Them Eat Rockets

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If you only read one thing about North Korea this week, Dan Sneider’s “op-ed”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09iht-edsneider.html in the _IHT_ would be a pretty gosh darn good choice.

Enjoy. I’m signing off for awhile now.

The Festival of Unenriched Fuel

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Notwithstanding an “earlier report”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1931/irans-equinox-fuel-manufacturing-plant-comes-online that the event would take place by the New Year, Iranian “news”:http://isna.ir/Isna/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1314002&Lang=E “media”:http://www5.irna.ir/En/View/FullStory/?NewsId=424858&IdLanguage=3 now report that the Fuel Manufacturing Plant at Isfahan will be ceremonially inaugurated tomorrow, National Nuclear Technology Day.

The FMP is already partly operational, making natural uranium pellets for fuel assemblies, destined for the Arak reactor. So call it the “Festival of Unenriched Fuel”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover.

Kuwait’s news service also “reports”:http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1988859&Language=en that “the production of a new generation of centrifuges” will be announced, presumably at Natanz. Does this mean that the “carbon-fiber”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1923/rimz-of-mass-destruction models exhibited last year at PFEP are now in production? We’ll see.

So what’s the point?

As in the past two years, the anniversary provides an occasion for President Ahmadinejad — now entering the homestretch of his re-election campaign — “to drape himself in the colors of nuclear patriotism”:http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8801190931. One can only hope for the traditional “open-source”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1851/iran-centrifuge-components “intel”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1870/more-on-the-ahmadinejad-visit-to-natanz “bonanza”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1901/ir2-and-ir3-scoops.

_Update: I missed this, the true “intel bonanza”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1849/ir-2s-on-display link._

Speaking of traditional nuclear holidays, the 11th “Yom-e Takbeer”:http://pkpolitics.com/2008/05/28/discuss-youm-e-takbeer-10th-nuclear-anniversary/, or Pakistani Day of Greatness, is coming up in a month or so. It commemorates the nuclear tests of 1998. Perhaps greatness is not “what comes to mind”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/magazine/05zardari-t.html, but symbols are funny that way: they lack substance.

(Hey, FCNL, why aren’t these dates on the “calendar”:http://www.fcnl.org/NuclearCalendar/?)

Coincidentally, representatives of the 5+1 group — the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany — will be “meeting tomorrow”:http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/08/burns_to_p51 in London. Before deciding to come out with any premature announcements, here’s another date they might ponder: Iran’s “election day”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009, June 12. With the recalcitrant incumbent boasting that Iran’s “nuclear case is closed”:http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8801191061, this might not be the best moment to supply him with election propaganda. Timing is everything…