Iran’s enriched uranium: what exactly do they have, where is it, and can it do any harm?

The Israeli-American attacks on Iran always seem to be about something different. Regime changethe Strait of Hormuz – American President Donald Trump does not seem to have a well-defined end goal. In any case, what is important in the background are the eighteen to twenty gas cylinders full of enriched uranium that Iran possesses, enough to make about ten nuclear warheads in a short time.

Last year, Iran’s enrichment facilities were attacked by Israel and the United States, but that action only clouded the view of the state of that uranium, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog. The concern in Washington, Jerusalem and Iran’s immediate neighbors is that if the military operation stops now, Iran will continue developing a nuclear bomb as quickly as possible. Even though Trump said recently also that it no longer interests him.

1What is enriched uranium?

Uranium is a metal extracted from uranium ore, which occurs naturally in the Earth’s soil. The element’s atomic nucleus has 92 protons, but the number of neutrons varies. Most of natural uranium consists of uranium-238 (U-238, which has 146 neutrons), but this is more difficult to fission and cannot sustain the chain reaction required to generate energy. This is possible with U-235 (143 neutrons), which occurs naturally in very small quantities (0.7 percent). A nuclear power plant requires a level of 3 to 5 percent U-235 (at Urenco in Almelo they enrich up to 4 percent), and for a nuclear weapon the content must preferably be above 90 percent, so-called ‘weapon grade uranium’.

For a higher amount of U-235, the uranium must be enriched. To do this, it is first bound to fluorine (uranium hexafluoride, UF₆), heated slightly to a gaseous compound, and then spun in steel centrifuges at between 50,000 and 100,000 rounds per minute. Because U-235 has fewer neutrons than U-238, it is lighter and concentrates in the center of the vortex in the centrifuges. There it can be drained off to be further concentrated in a subsequent centrifuge.

Iran has made the latest attacks offered dilute its enriched uranium to 20 percent or less U-235 by diluting it with other uranium isotopes. But the negotiations failed and the concentration of Iranian uranium is known to be unchanged.

2What exactly does Iran have to offer?

The IAEA assumes that Iran had 441 kilos of uranium at the start of this war, which is 60 percent enriched (so consists largely of U-235). That’s more or less confirmed by Abbas Araghchi, Iranian Foreign Minister. In addition, there is according to the BBC another thousand kilos of uranium enriched to 20 percent, and 8,500 kilos enriched to 3.5 percent.

The highly enriched uranium can be further enriched to 90 percent relatively quickly, making it suitable for between nine and eleven nuclear weapons. In principle, 42 kilos is enough for one nuclear weapon. According to Donald Trump, Iran only needed two to four weeks to make its first bomb, but that is up to experts doubted. For that you need enrichment installations that were used during last year’s attack, such as the same Trump claimedto be ‘totally destroyed’. Without properly functioning installations, production is impossible weapon grade uranium impossible.

The material is or was stored near the city of Isfahan, in a facility that was bombed by Israel and the US last year. Not with B2 bombers and heavy ‘bunker buster bombs’ but with Tomahawk missiles from the sea, because the installation is buried too deep. Actually hitting that installation would be too difficult. But the entrances were then closed to prevent anyone from entering. Earlier this year they were taken by Iran fortified and buriedprobably out of fear of new attacks. The uranium is stored in gaseous form under pressure in gas cylinders. According to Minister Araghchi, it is still there, under the rubble, and there are no plans to bring it up ourselves.

3Trump said he wanted to bomb Iran ‘back to the Stone Age’. Is that dangerous with so much uranium?

Those four hundred kilos of uranium are more dangerous “if they fall on top of you,” a nuclear physicist from the University of Surrey said last year in Time. But a bomb on Iran’s uranium stockpile could certainly be dangerous for the immediate area, although it would not be a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima: because no atomic fission takes place in such an enrichment facility, the risk of a nuclear explosion is nil.

You certainly don’t want to inhale or swallow the released uranium particles, because that can damage the lungs, kidneys and other organs. But what’s released won’t go far, and its radiation isn’t extremely dangerous, because uranium’s half-life—the time it takes for half of its atoms to decay—is extremely long (U-238 around 4.5 billion years and U-235 just over 700 million years). It does not fall apart quickly and the radiation is therefore not released quickly. Uranium is therefore more dangerous as a toxic heavy metal than because of its radioactivity.

It’s also not good news if uranium hexafluoride, the compound spun around in the centrifuges, is released. This gas reacts with water and moisture in the air, forming very corrosive substances. Last year’s bombing was what the IAEA warned about, especially for people living near such an installation. But, as Professor Claire Corkhill from the University of Bristol at the BBC said: “It will not have a major impact on the environment beyond the immediate area.”

None of this applies if a nuclear reactor is hit. Russia warns for the risks of attacks near the reactor of the western Iranian city of Bushehr, where many Russians also work. According to the IAEA there are no indications that that reactor, or other Iranian nuclear installations, have been hit.

4If bombing is difficult, how do you prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?

Washington would agreeboots on the ground‘ – ground forces – to consider. But a group of Navy Seals flown in secretly won’t be able to get the job done. In addition to a large number of men to secure the site, they also have to take specialized digging equipment with them (due to the previous bombings) and try to get the stuff out of the country safely.

When the US removed 600 kilos of highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan in 1994 to prevent nuclear proliferation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this took a month. Isfahan is located almost five hundred kilometers inland, far from safe territory for Americans and very vulnerable to counterattacks. But who knows: thousands of marines and airborne troops have been sent to the region in recent days. In a TV speech last week, Trump was ambiguous about it. He said that after last year’s bombings the uranium consists only of ‘nuclear dust’. “And we’re keeping it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make even a move in that direction [van het ‘nucleaire stof’]we will hit them very hard again with missiles.”

Yet it is not conclusively established that the uranium is really there: Iran claims that it is safely under the rubble, but it may have spread the canisters of uranium throughout the country. According to the IAEAtwo hundred kilograms are at Isfahan, but where are the rest? According to some Israeli media the Mossad intelligence service would know exactly where the uranium is located.

And otherwise there is the diplomatic route, whether or not under pressure from persistent heavy bombings. Assuming that Iran still has it under control after the heavy attacks on the regime, and that it has not fallen into the hands of malicious parties.

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