Technical Problems Persist Despite Much-Hyped Advancements in Iran's Nuclear Program Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

The power plant at Bushehr was officially connected to the grid this weekend, squeaking out 60 megawatts of electricity during a test run on Sunday at midnight.

Iranian officials hailed this achievement, yet again, but failed to acknowledge the repeated technical setbacks the Bushehr plant has faced since construction first broke ground in the 1970s.

Bushehr is operated by the Russians, who are providing and taking back the fuel. This alleviates the most worrisome proliferation concern - as does the fact that Bushehr is under IAEA safeguards. The plant does not bring Iran closer to a nuclear weapon capability and is distinct from other facilities where activities cannot be verified. Bushehr is, however, indicative of the larger technical problems plaguing Iran’s nuclear program. In an IAEA safeguards report released last week, the Secretary General’s report noted that during a recent visit to Bushehr, “Iran explained that the reactor had been shut down for technical reasons and that it was planning to restart the reactor within the next few days.” This is pretty much par for the course. 

The updated IAEA report was widely circulated as proof that Iran is coming ever closer to achieving a breakout capability, and that may well be, but there’s more good news to this report than the headlines suggested.

While Iran is now operating a new generation of advanced centrifuges, it’s telling that it has taken this long to do so. Iran has installed IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuges at its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz, but it’s only using a few of them – putting them well behind their intended schedule. What’s more – Iran hasn’t installed any of these advanced centrifuges at its underground facility near the city of Qom, as it announced it would. That Iran installed IR-1 centrifuges at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is unusual. The Institute for Science and International Security reported that these are new IR-1 centrifuges, but even if that’s the case, it indicates some sort of delay and/or setback. In a recent piece, David Sanger notes how inefficient the IR-1 centrifuges are and points out that Ahmadinejad announced over five years ago that Iran would be pursuing advanced centrifuges:

The cranky IR-1 stands over six feet tall. Inside, a hollow rotor of aluminum spins uranium gas, slowly enriching the material in the rare isotope that can be turned into fuel for reactors and warheads. But the design is so antiquated and inefficient, that even Pakistan stopped using those centrifuges long ago. There are tales of catastrophic failures in the machines, which spin at supersonic speeds. The Stuxnet attack was designed to speed them up, and make them explode.

In an April 2006 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad boasted that the nation was embarking on a new generation of more advanced centrifuges that would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers. Those centrifuges were also based on a design obtained from Mr. Khan. Iran failed to obtain a very hard type of steel to make rotors for them. So, in secret, the Iranians developed their own, with the rotor made of carbon fibers.

The Arms Control Association’s Peter Crail further notes:

Iran’s slipping timeframe for the introduction of its more advanced machines is not surprising since its nuclear program deadlines are often fluid. However, it does appear to back official and independent assessments that Iran still faces problems developing these new centrifuges, including getting sufficient materials to build them in large numbers.

None of these setbacks, however, change the fact that Iran simply does not need the amount uranium it is currently enriching – particularly at the 20 percent level. It is getting harder and harder for Iran to justify this and damning conclusions like that which was announced by the IAEA on Friday – that “the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities” – only leads to an increasingly isolated Iran. And while evidence of a possible military dimension continues to pile up, so too does the string of technical setbacks.

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