If Iran Can Get This Reactor Online, Israel May Not Be Able to Bomb It
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In the foreground of the nuclear talks between Iran and Western powers that got under way in Geneva this month were centrifuges, yellowcake and enriched uranium — all elements of what Iran calls a peaceful nuclear-energy program and what the West worries is a route to a nuclear weapon. But Iran has also charted a second route, one that could produce fuel for a possible bomb not from highly enriched uranium but out of plutonium, a product of the heavy-water reactor nearing completion in the hills outside the city of Arak, 300 km (190 miles) southwest of Tehran. Heavy water is water with an extra neutron, useful in moderating a nuclear reaction.
Because it is not yet up and running, the Arak heavy-water reactor has remained in the background of the nuclear controversy. But it looms larger every day. The reason: once Arak goes online, the option of destroying Iran’s nuclear program with air strikes becomes moot. The reactor is essentially invulnerable to military attack, because bombing one risks a catastrophic release of radioactivity. In the words of Israel’s last chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, who piloted one of the F-16A’s that cratered Iraq’s Osirak heavy-water reactor in 1981 before it was due to become operational: “Whoever considers attacking an active reactor is willing to invite another Chernobyl, and no one wants to do that.”
That reality is the reason why some experts are drawing attention to a peculiar notice filed by Iran’s nuclear agency to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in May. Iran told the U.N. agency that, as it readies the Arak plant for operation, it intends to do a practice run: instead of inserting real fuel rods filled with uranium into the reactor’s core, where nuclear fission occurs, they would insert inert “dummy” fuel rods. And instead of pumping heavy water into the reactor to moderate the nuclear reaction and absorb the thermal energy being released, Iran said it plans to use “light water,” just ordinary H2O.
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The plan mystifies experts, who take particular issue with testing the system using light water. The facility would be contaminated by ordinary H2O, which if mixed with heavy water would render the latter unusable, because in order to work heavy water must be 99.75% pure.
“Anything above that is hard to achieve and testing the system with light water would leave a residual atmosphere of H2O that would degrade the heavy water when it is added,” writes one U.S. specialist of heavy-water reactors, who has worked with the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, and who shared his assessment on condition he not be identified further. In other words, rather than save time, using ordinary water would delay the project for the weeks required to clean the system thoroughly enough to assure no trace of H2O remained; it wouldn’t take much to dilute the heavy water below 99.75%.
Iran’s stated intentions are unlikely enough that an Israeli nuclear specialist suggests that they might be a ruse. Ephraim Asculai, a scientist retired from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, warns that Iran may have no intention of carrying out a dry run at all. It may be a cover story, he posits, for a plan to rush the installation of live fuel rods and heavy water instead — essentially getting the Arak facility “hot” before the outside world expects, at which point it becomes invulnerable to military attack. There might then be no way to stop Iran’s nuclear program short of invasion.
“At that point, they are in the ‘zone of immunity’ as it’s called,” says Asculai, who has also worked at ISIS; he is currently a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank at Tel Aviv University.
Although Iran already has enough enriched uranium to fuel more than one bomb — should it make the decision to convert the enriched uranium to military use — that’s not all the world must worry about. “The Arak reactor is increasingly relevant and, yes, it’s been a sideshow,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department nonproliferation chief now at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, where Asculai laid out the “ruse” possibility during a September talk. “The angle of Iran pulling a fast one isn’t something that can be dismissed,” says Fitzpatrick. “I think it’s unlikely,” he adds — because so rash an act would run counter to Iran’s patient behavior to date and it would take “a couple of years” to generate enough plutonium for a bomb. “But it’s something that should be factored into whatever is tabled in Geneva.”
(MORE: As Iran and the West Make Progress in Geneva, Israel Grumbles From the Sidelines)
U.S. officials say Arak is indeed on their radar. “We have very serious concerns about them having a plutonium capability, another pathway for fissile material for nuclear weapons,” a senior American official told reporters before the first round of talks since the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani; a second round is set for early November. “It is a subject,” the senior official said, “of enormous concern.”
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