Happy Iranian Nuclear Day! And everything you have ever wanted to know about centrifuges.
Yes, today, 9 April, is the official Iranian holiday to celebrate all the progress that the Iranians have made toward nuclear self-sufficiency. The Iranian nuclear program is getting lots of news, especially their effort to enrich uranium using centrifuges and today’s inauguration of their new fuel fabrication facility. The fundamental problem with centrifuges is that they can be used to produce uranium for a nuclear reactor but the very same machines can also be used to produce uranium for a nuclear bomb. The Iranians protest that they have every right to nuclear power while the rest of the world worries that the entire nuclear power enterprise is a thin cover for a bomb program.
If you have ever wondered how centrifuges work, how they are built, or their link between bombs and power plants, the Federation of American Scientists has answered your question. My colleague, Ivanka Barzashka, and I have just published an entirely new section of the FAS website explaining centrifuge technology and the associated proliferation concerns. It even includes a nice animated video that demonstrates how centrifuges work. I believe that this is the single best resource on centrifuge technology on the web.
Soon, Ms Barzashaka, will post additional sections that look specifically at the Iranian centrifuge program, analyzing what the capabilities of their machines are and how fast they can enrich uranium.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.