Iran as a Pioneer Case for Multilateral Nuclear Arrangements

Iran as a Pioneer Case for Multilateral Nuclear Arrangements
by
Geoffrey Forden and John Thomson
24 May 2007

Mohammed ElBaradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has recently underlined that Iran continues to perfect its knowledge relevant to uranium enrichment, and to expand the capacity of its enrichment facility. The United Nations Security Council continues to insist that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment related activities.

The current stalemate in international efforts to alleviate concerns related to Iran's nuclear programme has already led to the imposition of sanctions against Iran and may lead to a more serious confrontation in the future.

The Forden-Thomson plan proposes a modern multilateral enrichment facility on Iranian soil with the capacity to provide material for a virtual fuel bank if the IAEA so wishes. The authors offer this plan as the best available option in a difficult situation because it bridges the basic requirements of Iran and the international community.

Forden and Thomson have subsequently developed a note addressing the question of how to minimize the risk that Iran would "break out" from any multilateral nuclear arrangement. The note is available here: Iran nuclear crisis: Note on potential break‐out scenarios

Technical resources explaining uranium enrichment

Uranium enrichment technologies are explained on the website of GlobalSecurity.org and can be found at URL http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/u-enrichment.htm.

SIPRI has published a detailed technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks in Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation by Allan S. Krass, Peter Boskma, Boelie Elzen and Wim A. Smit.

Uranium enrichment is one part of the nuclear fuel cycle. An introduction to the nuclear fuel cycle can be found at: http://www.uic.com.au/nfc.htm.

The Science, Technology and Global Security Working Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Science, Technology and Society maintains additional resources related to Searching for Solutions to the Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Multinational Enrichment Agreements at URL http://mit.edu/stgs/irancrisis.html.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) publish a number of interesting and valuable documents that analyse Iran's nuclear programme and that help to explain uranium enrichment on their website at URL http://isis-online.org/. ISIS has studied the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz and published an analysis online at URL http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/natanz03_02.html.

Calculating the rate of uranium enrichment is not always straightforward. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) have developed a tool that helps calculate Separative Work Units (SWU), the unit often used to measure the work expended during an enrichment process. The tool is available online at URL http://www.fas.org/cgi-bin/sep.pl.

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Any reproduction of text and data is authorized only by permission, SIPRI June 2007.