The uranium fuel agreement Iran struck with Turkey and Brazil has a key technical flaw as it fails to allocate enough time to make the fuel, a Western diplomat said on Monday.
“Getting this fuel in one year is impossible. It takes at least one and a half years to have this,” the diplomat told reporters.
The deal “cannot work because it is only one year and it takes more time to get the enriched uranium,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the issue.
The accord calls for Tehran to ship around half its stock of low-enriched uranium to Turkey.
It would later receive a supply of more highly enriched uranium in the form of fuel it needs for a reactor that produces isotopes for medical diagnosis.
The goal is for Iran to create confidence by reducing its uranium stockpile, at least for the months it would take to produce more, below the amounts needed to process further into a bomb.
The finished reactor fuel is considered less of a proliferation risk than the low enriched uranium used to make it.
Iran’s uranium enrichment activities are at the heart of fears about its nuclear program because highly enriched uranium of over 90 percent purity can be used to make an atomic bomb.
Iran has been enriching uranium up to 5 percent in what it says is an attempt to make low-enriched fuel for civilian power reactor use.
The fuel Iran needs for its Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) is just under 20 percent enriched, a level closer to weapon-grade.
On Monday, Iran formally submitted notice of the fuel swap deal with Turkey and Brazil to the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna.
Delegates from the three countries handed the IAEA a letter about the May 17 deal struck in Tehran.
The agency did not immediately comment on the content of the letter, but according to the text of the agreement released last week, Iran has “expressed its readiness to deposit its LEU (low enriched uranium — 1,200kg) within one month.”
“On the basis of the same agreement, the Vienna Group [the US, Russia, France and the IAEA] should deliver 120kg fuel required for TRR in no later than one year,” the May 17 text said.
The diplomat said this means that if Iran has not received its fuel in one year, it could take its low enriched uranium back from Turkey, where it is to be deposited and so boost its stockpile.
“The uranium will be in Turkey and the deal is that after one year they can take it back. So as we know that it will take more than one year to give them the fuel, that means that ... after one year, they can take it back and then wait for the fuel to come six months later,” the diplomat said.
“There is something tricky there, but we will see in a year. It is still too early,” he added.
Washington-based nuclear expert David Albright said it could take two years to make the fuel and this was a “real showstopper” for the deal.
The fuel, Albright said, would be in the form of metal plates, which have to be densely concentrated with the right uranium isotope for the level of enrichment required.
Western governments have been dismissive of the new swap deal, saying it fails to address concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for civilian purposes.
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
With a monthly pension barely sufficient to buy 15 eggs or a small bag of rice, Cuba’s elderly people struggle to make ends meet in one of Latin America’s poorest and fastest-aging countries. As the communist island battles its deepest economic crisis in three decades, the state is finding it increasingly hard to care for about 2.4 million inhabitants — more than one-quarter of the population — aged 60 and older. Sixty is the age at which women — for men it is 65 — qualify for the state pension, which starts at 1,528 pesos per month. That is less than US$13
RSS