15. Iranian Nuclear Fusion Program

Iranian Ali Akbar Salehi, of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said Saturday (July 24, 2010) that Iran is stepping up its research on nuclear fusion in a bid to produce alternative sources of energy. Salehi said Tehran plans to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. He said that Iran had hired 50 scientists to work on the project, and that $8 million had been allocated for what he called "serious" research. It is puzzling why Lalehi chose this moment to make his announcement when world powers are vigorously pressuring Tehran to suspend its controversial nuclear activities.

Salehi, who has a doctorate from MIT, claimed that Iran's project would require intense effort, but could provide Tehran with large dividends in diversifying its sources of civilian energy. He says that nuclear fusion is a new technology, and that it needs intense effort to develop. He adds that it will take 20 to 30 years to commercialize nuclear fusion, but that Iran will try to use its resources to achieve that goal sooner. The vision, however, is chimereal. Asghar Sediqzadeh, who was appointed to run Iran's new fusion research center, told Iranian television that it would take two years to conclude initial studies, followed by another 10 years to design and build a fusion reactor

A fusion reactor that is economically feasible is much like the images one sees when viewing a 3-D movie. The temptation to reach out and touch the butterfly or fish floating by is overwhelming, but always just out of reach. For a fusion reactor to do anything to contribute to an alternative method of producing energy it must pass through four stages:

1. Scientific feasibility


2. Engineering feasibility


3. Economic feasibility


4. Commercial feasibility.

No research center anywhere in the world has reached stage 2. Stage two requires that more energy be produced by the reactor than goes into the machine.

Scientific feasibility has been demonstrated in at least three ways. Two groups are leading in the research to produce a fusion reactor. One is centered at the University of Rochester, which uses laser technology, and the other is Los Alamos using another method of compressing the fuel. In 2006, global powers agreed to spend more than $12 billion to build an experimental fusion reactor in the south of France. That accord was signed by the United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, South Korea and Japan.These groups have produced bursts of energy from fusion reactions, but the output energy is far from the input energy (including the paraphernalia required to make up the reactor).

Achieving a fusion reaction requires highly energized matter (usually a form of hydrogen or perhaps lithium) to be confined in a density that allows for the nuclear force of repulsion to be overcome and the very hot nuclei in the mix combine forming a heavier atom and at the same time releasing energy. This is an enormously difficult process, demanding hundreds of specialities and huge capital investments.

The announcement from Iran brings a chill to the rest of the world since fusion is also the process that produces the thermonuclear explosions of hydrogen bombs. In theory, there is no limit on the yield of a thermonuclear weapon. However, achieving the reaction in a bomb is also extremely difficult.

The Chinese, in the mid-1960s, revealed their own fusion program, oriented to nuclear weapons. Their first step was to test a boosted fission weapon. A boosted weapon used the heat and compression achieved to set off a fission bomb to achieve the temperature and confinement needed to begin fusion. Such weapons are more powerful than ordinary atomic bombs, which rely on fission reactions. Clearly such weapons are feasible. Thus the cold chill of the Iranian announcement.

It wouldn’t’ be a bad thing if the Iranians had this wonderful technological edge over the rest of the world, and they were about to produce a nuclear reactor that does fusion in a commercially viable fashion. No one else has come close so far. bless them," said Ottolenghi. Maybe the Iranians are up to just playful banter. However, if one looks at what the reality of a military program is, if you want to have thermonuclear weapons, you need to master the technology for fusion. And while fusion is not commercially viable for civilian purposes, fusion allows you to build infinitely more powerful nuclear weapons."

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran's controversial nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz has now produced close to 2.5 tons of low-grade, enriched uranium. The Iranian government claims it now has 17 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium. Experts say that such a quantity could be used to build two nuclear (fission-based) warheads.

14. Iranian Nuclear Scientist a Redefector

Iranian Nuclear Scientist a Redefector.

Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scientist who a U.S. official says was paid $5 million for information on Iran's nuclear programs, returned July 15, 2010 to Iran. He thus became a redefector, an individual who defects to an adversary and then undergoes a change of heart and returns home.

Nigel West (Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2006, p. 214) gives examples of the few who have redefected form the U.S. The most notorious is KGB’s Vitali Yurchenko who had defected to the CIA in Rome in July 1985, then three months later turned himself in to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. He held a press conference where he claimed he had been abducted and drugged.

Amiri’s story is not so different. The U.S. says he was a willing defector who changed his mind and decided to board a plane home from Washington. Amiri has told a very different tale, claiming he was snatched while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and bundled off to the United States to be harshly interrogated and offered millions of dollars by the CIA to speak against Iran.

U.S. officials have insisted that Amiri was neither kidnapped nor coerced into leaving Iran and that he made the decision to come to the U.S. without his family. The U.S. official added that Amiri decided to return to Iran in order to see his family again.

In Tehran, Iranian lawmaker Amir Taherkhani boasted that Amiri's return "shows the strength of the Islamic republic." Another prominent parliament member, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, called the alleged kidnapping a "terrorist act."
It remains unclear how Iranian authorities will ultimately deal with Amiri -- and the U.S. claims he cooperated with American authorities -- despite his hero-style welcome.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called Amiri a "dear compatriot" and said Iran was keenly interested in learning more about the reasons for his alleged abduction.
The CIA agreed to pay Shahram Amiri a $5 million fee to provide intelligence, but Amiri could not carry the money back with him. The money paid Amiri came from a secret program aimed at inducing scientists and others with information on Iran's nuclear program to defect, according to The Washington Post.

Anything he got from the CIA now far beyond his reach, owing to the financial sanctions on Iran. Iran's leaders are expected to use Amiri to ring up as many propaganda points as possible against Washington - showing that relations remain in a deep freeze and hopes of breakthrough talks appear as distant as ever.

The conflicting accounts about Amiri - whether he was a captive of the Americans or a homesick defector - are unlikely to alter the Western-led pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. It also gives the ruling clerics a welcome distraction at a time when domestic protests are growing over Iran's stumbling economy and worries about the fallout from international sanctions.

At first Amiri claimed the CIA "pressured me to help with their propaganda against Iran," he said, including offering him up to $10 million to talk to U.S. media and claim to have documents on a laptop against Iran. He said he refused to take the money. Also, back in Tehran, Amiri also sought to play down his role in Iran's nuclear program - which Washington and allies fear could be used to create atomic weapons. Iran says it only seeks energy-producing reactors. "I am a simple researcher who was working in the university," he said. "I'm not involved in any confidential jobs. I had no classified information."

05. Countering Iran's Claims for a Nuclear Program

05. Does Iran Need Nuclear Reactors? Countering Arguments.

The last blog presented Iran’s arguments for nuclear power based on three arguments: (1) using the gas for producing petrochemical products, and (2) preserving much of Iran's gas reserves for her future generations and to position Iran in 40-50 years as the main supplier of energy to Europe and Asia, and, (3) avoiding the severe adverse effect of burning gas and the resulting carbon emission which is the major culprit in global warming and the greenhouse effect (to be discussed in the next blog entry.)


Before looking at the third argument Iran makes (listed above) let’s consider the first two arguments. It is true that sole reliance on a depletable source of energy is a potential disaster, not only for Iran, but for any country that has diminishing reserves. Further, worldwide, reserves are diminishing and imports are not only expensive, but they too make one a hostage politically and economically to guarantee a continuing supply. Of all alternative sources, nuclear is not the most advantageous one, and certainly not the only one to consider. Cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear energy is significantly higher than for oil-fired or gas-fired plants. Conservation could immediately reduce electrical demand by a third if fully implemented.

Looking at the capital investment required, the cost of containment, security, cleanup, and storage of spent nuclear fuel, makes nuclear look rather unattractive. If using up a depletable source is Iran’s only argument for nuclear power then it is at best self-serving, and at worst duplicitous. When one operates a nuclear plant, one is going to produce additional nuclear fuel from U238 in the fuel rods. If Iran selects breeder reactors then the quantity of material produce that could be used in nuclear weapons is even greater. Reprocessing spent fuel to recover plutonium is a relatively simple task compared to refining uranium to produce U235.

If Iran is truly concerned about alternative sources a great deal of effort and development in other alternative sources would make their claim more credible. A further, more credible claim from a developing country might be, “If we have nuclear weapons then you would not hesitate to provide us with nuclear power. The West, particularly the United States, views itself as the guardians of morality regarding warehousing and use of nuclear weapons. We do not concede that point.” Since truly persuasive arguments for nuclear power are not made in (1) and (2) above, they can be dismissed. We conclude Iran really wants a nuclear arsenal to be taken seriously in the community of nations.

We will next consider Iran’s environmental arguments for nuclear power.

03. Targeting Nuclear Weapons for Iran.

What would be targets Iran would select for its nuclear arsenal?

Targeting requires consideration of the capabilities of the weapons. Capabilities are: yield, accuracy, and time from alert to launch.
Yield of the weapon can vary over a wide range. Bigger is not necessarily better as destructive power does not increase at the same rate as the yield. Accuracy depends on the delivery vehicle. Time from alert to launch depends on the fuel used, and the time for personnel to ready and operate the launch. These are overlapping capabilities.

If Iran wishes to attack “hard” targets (protected weapons of the enemy, such as hardened silos containing ICBMs) then it must have rather accurate targeting. If the warhead is detonated at a range beyond its destructive capability, the target survives. For inaccurate weapons the only hope for use against hard targets is a very large yield. It is not likely that Iran would or could develop very high-yield weapons, owing to the technological difficulty in construction and the very difficult problem of finding a vehicle capable of delivering the weapon. Missile technology must develop over time, and constructing a missile with that is highly accurate is extremely difficult. The SCUD missile used by Saddam Hussein was notoriously inaccurate and never hit any target at which it was truly aimed. Iran has not demonstrated any flights of long-range missiles of accuracy. Based on the above, Iran would not likely target hard targets.

Soft targets, on the other hand, are vulnerable to low-yield weapons (in the order of kilotons, instead of megatons) and could be vulnerable to an Iran-developed weapon. Cities, ports, military installations are all soft. But what would be the strategic benefit of wiping out an Israeli city? Surely this would more than invite massive retaliation against Iran.

Still, we must keep in mind that Iran is not at all likely to act in what western minds would consider a “logical” manner. Given the nature of the regime, who can say what it might do. Intelligence will be weak regarding what rogue actions Iran might take.

Most likely, Iran will continue a nuclear program, proclaimed to be non-military, and not weapons oriented. At some point it will let “slip” hints that it is nuclearly armed. That may be all it needs to do to gain its geopolitical aims, or at least more of them, since it can never be discounted that it could develop tactical or even strategic weapons. The defense must always overestimate the offense. Who would want to ignore the threat of a nuclear attack if it might be credible?

My next blog will look at methods of preparing weapons grade fuel for nuclear weapons.

01. Does Iran Have a Nuclear Weapon?

Does Iran Have a Nuclear Weapon?

The one thing we can be confident of is that Iran has not tested a nuclear weapon. Thus it probably does not have a stockpile of even one nuclear weapon.
The more fundamental and important question is, "Does Iran have a nuclear weapons development program?" The second question almost equally important is "Why would Iran want to have a nuclear weapon?" Finally, "If Iran had a nuclear weapon, what could it do with it.

A nuclear weapon requires four elements: a nuclear fuel, a method of assembling the fuel so a fission chain reaction will begin a method of containing the chain reaction until enough energy has been released to make the weapon explode with nuclear force, and finally a trigger mechanism. None of these is easy, and the collection of sine qua non elements cannot be developed at a single site or by a single group of developers.

The nuclear fuel must be U235 or a fissionable isotope of plutonium. Both are extremely expensive to produce. U235 exists in nature, but at such a low percentage of naturally occurring uranium that it is extremely expensive to extract, and requires huge resources of electrical power to operate the refining plant. Of course, one must also have access to a source of uranium, and that is difficult if it is not found within the country. Plutonium does not occur naturally (any more) so it would have to be produced from the very heavy elements. Again a huge plant and electrical resources are required and such facilities leave such a footprint that they are not difficult to find.

A route around such huge plants is to operate a breeder reactor: one that produces more fuel than it consumes. This seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics but it does not, since the operation of the reactor releases energy and some of this energy can be used to transmute some of the non-weapons isotopes into weapons grade nuclear material. If the material produced in the breeder is plutonium then the task of producing bomb material becomes much easier, since plutonium can be separated from uranium by chemical processes, a much easier way than producing U235.

Does Iran have breeder reactors? If it does, it can claim with a great deal of truth that the reactor is for energy production, since that would be true. So what can be done to assure that a weapons program is not underway? Very little in Iran. Inspectors certainly are not going to have a look under the "lady's skirt" to see what is going on at the reactor. One must look for how spent fuel is stored and where, and whether it is moved to a suspicious facility that may allow for reprocessing the fuel to obtain plutonium.

A nuclear trigger is pretty complicated technology, too. It does not require an enormous facility to develop. The simplest way of getting a trigger mechanism is to steal it. Any effort by Iran to acquire a trigger would be clear evidence of a nuclear weapons program and would undoubtedly bring sanctions from limited ones to a first-strike attack on Iran.

Containing the explosion is simple to understand but difficult to achieve. A program to develop a containment technology requires chemical engineers, metallurgical engineers, electrical engineers, and advanced computer technology. These elements are in theory detectable, but one cannot be sure just what they are working on.
A detection program for determining just what Iran may be doing has to focus on finding all the elements of the program and also finding connections between them. This is a most difficult process. A country risks being made a fool of, and even international condemnation for attacking any facility peremptorily. However if nothing is done, the world may find itself with a new member of the nuclear club.
But Iran doesn't actually have to possess a nuclear weapon to gain significantly in being taken seriously by the international community. It merely needs a credible possibility of having such a weapon, or even of having a program to develop one. Iran suddenly becomes a major player in international affairs when it presents the smile of the Cheshire cat, not denying a weapons program, offering teasing evidence of having one, and barking about its determination to protect itself against whatever.

In the next entry I will discuss how Iran can use a threat, and what it might do if it actually had a useable weapon.