by Ivanka Barzashka

We have posted an updated version of our latest Issue Brief “Calculating the Capacity of Fordow” – the technical appendix to our November 23 article “A Technical Evaluation of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant” published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

This is the document summary:

This brief serves as a technical appendix to our November 23 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which premised that Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant is well-sized neither for a commercial nor military program. We concluded that Fordow may be one of several facilities planned. Our estimates of the plant’s capacity are based on current performance of IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz. Underlying our assessment is a calculation of the effective separative capacity per machine of 0.44 kg-SWU/year. This result is based on IAEA data, which we consider as the most credible open-source information on Iran’s nuclear program. Our estimate for the IR-1 performance is significantly lower than values published in the literature, which cannot account for the current performance of Natanz. We argue that, despite Iranian rhetoric, Tehran’s strategic planning for Fordow is based on actual enrichment performance rather than on desired results.

We have made significant layout improvements and have edited the text for clarity. More importantly, we have added detailed explanations on the calculations behind two additional scenarios that we considered in the Bulletin article, namely producing LEU for a commercial reactor from natural uranium and producing a bomb’s worth of HEU from LEU. We have used more precise numbers than the conservative estimates reflected in the Bulletin article, which yield longer timelines and only strengthen our conclusions. Also, version one of the Brief contained numbers only on Fordow’s capability to produce a significant quantity of HEU from natural uranium. This was the only scenario that we have received questions about despite the fact that all three calculations are based on the same premise regarding the effective capacity of the IR-1.

In addition, we have included a section explaining our rationale behind using IAEA’s significant quantity as the amount of uranium required for a bomb. When allowing the Iranians the opportunity to get to a “bomb’s worth” of material faster by assuming less material is needed, one is also assuming a more sophisticated bomb design that will require a longer design phase and will almost certainly require testing, which will be unambiguous. In effect, cutting down on the material production time will result in a longer time to develop a weapon.

We thank everyone for their interest in our work and will address published criticisms directly in an upcoming blog.

Last week, my ace research assistant, Ivanka Bazashka, and I published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists an analysis of Iran’s recently revealed Fordow uranium enrichment facility, lying just north of Qom.  In summary, we concluded that the timing of the construction and announcement of the facility did not prove an Iranian intention to deceive the agency but certainly raises many troubling questions.  The facility is far too small for a commercial enrichment facility, raising additional serious concerns that it might be intended as a covert facility to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for weapons.  But we also argued that the facility is actually too small to be of great use to a weapons program.  A quite plausible explanation is that the facility was meant to be one of several covert enrichment facilities and simply the only one to be discovered.  We believe, however, that it is significant that the Iranians assured the agency that they “did not have any other nuclear facilities that were currently under construction or in operation that had not yet been declared to the Agency” because any additional facilities uncovered in the future will be almost impossible to explain innocently. This, however, does not preclude Iran from making a decision to construct new enrichment facilities in the future.

Well, in just a few days, things have changed.  We immediately got a lot of emails (some of them quite rude!) challenging our numbers.  The Bulletin does not allow for lots of technical detail and we could not put our calculation in the article.  So Ivanka and I have written an explanation of the derivation of our numbers.  It is the first of a new format for the FAS website, FAS Issue Briefs.  I expect that Hans, Matt, Nishal, and others will make good use of the format in the future.  You can see our calculations in Calculating the Capacity of Fordow.

We show in our Issue Brief that the oft-cited performance of the Iranian centrifuge is based, at best, on hearsay, and, at worst, circular citations.  Reporters get away all the time with citing “high level officials” and the like but analysts do not have that luxury.  The reason that we are discussing the Iranian enrichment program is because of grave, immediate policy implications.  This not just a question of when Iran might get the bomb, but should we take military action, should we go to war, and when.  Ivanka and I conclude that the approach most often taken for estimating Iranian performance is unreliable and will almost certainly overestimate their capabilities.  We demonstrate an alternative based on universally accepted, publicly available data.

In particular, we should be very wary of Iranian statements of their own capability.  If I said that the National Ignition Facility at Livermore National Laboratory was going to achieve break even laser fusion within a year and cited an interview with the director of NIF, everyone would laugh at me.  Statements by Iran about Iran’s capability should be taken with an equally large grain of salt.  The Iranians brag about their technological virtuosity, specifically that, in spite of sanctions, they are still able to enrich uranium.   It is obviously a matter of national pride.  But do they explain to their taxpayers that they are spending billions of dollars to struggle to reproduce technology that the Europeans left behind as obsolete a half century ago and even that they do inefficiently?  Our calculations, based on publicly available IAEA reports, shows that Iran is operating its centrifuges at 20-25% of what we might expect.

The second big change is Iran’s announcement of ten new future enrichment facilities.  We argued in our Bulletin article that it was significant that Iran told the IAEA that there were no undeclared facilities waiting to be discovered.  Ivanka was more skeptical, saying that this declaration meant little if the Iranians used their definition of when they were required to “declare.”  I thought it more significant because any future discovery would be impossible to portray as innocent.  On the other hand, we also said that the Fordow facililty did not make much sense except as part of a network of clandestine facilities.  Well, the Iranians helped resolve that question when a few days later they announced that they were going to build ten new enrichment facilities, probably similar to Fordow.  It is getting harder and harder to give Iran the benefit of the doubt.

By Ivanka Barzashka

FAS has posted a report on “Enrichment Supply and Technology Outside the United States” by S. A. Levin and S. Blumkin from the Enrichment Department of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, operated at the time by Union Carbide. The document, prepared for the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, reviews international uranium enrichment capacity and isotope separation technology as of 1977.

Apart from being of historical interest, the report explicitly states that Eurodif, a French-organized multinational enrichment consortium, was in part owned by Iran.

“The membership and apportionment of shares in Eurodif has been changeable. Presently, it is constituted by Belgium and Spain 11% each. Italy 25%, France 28% and Sofidif 25%, which is 40% owned by Iran and 60% by France.”

“In 1975, another consortium called Coredif with the same multinational membership as Eurodif but a different distribution of shares (Eurodif 51%, France 29% and Iran 20%) was organized to assess future nuclear demand and build a second Eurodif-type plant if the study results justified it.”

This is consistent with Iran’s claims that it owned shares of the enrichment company prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This claim has been confirmed by the French government, but Iran has never received enriched uranium from the company.

The document has a disclaimer that “[i]t should not be presumed that the inclusion in this presentation of any reported information necessarily attests to its validity.”

by Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich

After a cascade of disclosures and official announcements, followed by a great deal of conjecture from experts and the media, the Fordo enrichment plant, Iran’s newest enrichment facility located in the mountains near Qom, opened its doors on October 25 to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. The US, France, and Britain accuse Iran of building the facility covertly and “challenging the basic compact at the center of the non-proliferation regime.” Iran claims the accusations are “hypothetical” and “fantasy” and are part of a conspiracy against Iran’s nuclear program. The Agency has an indispensable role of providing an objective technical account of the facility and ultimately determining whether Iran violated its Safeguards Agreement. But how much can we expect to learn from the first visit to the facility and would that provide sufficient information to resolve the accusations made against Iran?

Location

With a brief letter to the IAEA on September 21, Iran formally announced the existence of the third enrichment plant new Qom, in addition to its commercial-scale Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) and the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz. It is not clear whether Iran provided the exact location of the new enrichment facility in the original letter to the IAEA. The White House said that the facility was located near Qom and was “very heavily protected, very heavily disguised,” but also did not disclose the exact location. The same day, Western media quoted Western diplomatic sources saying that the enrichment site was “on a mountain on a former Iranian Revolutionary Guards missile site to the north-east of Qom on the Qom-Aliabad highway”. This unleashed a frantic search by the expert community, which days later produced satellite images of potential sites. The best analysis came from Jane’s IHS, which placed the enrichment facility 20 miles (or about 32 km) northeast of Qom.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), Ali Akbar Salehi, stated on October 26 that the enrichment plant was located 100 km from Tehran. Since Qom is by road 156 km southwest of Tehran, this places the location about 56 km north of the holy city, which is different from Jane’s location. Most likely, Salehi’s statement was only an approximation and is therefore consistent with Western accounts. The AEOI, however, did not release images of the facility.

However, a statement by the Office of Public Relations of AEOI, reprinted by Iranian news channel IRINN on October 28, requested that media refer to the nuclear site as Fordo, not Qom. Fordo, which means heaven (from the Farsi word “ferdos”), is a village 50 km south of Qom, but still in the province of Qom. According to the city’s official website, which is “subtly” adorned with an Iranian flag superimposed with a symbol of the atom, the enrichment site was located 160 km south of Tehran, placing it just south of Qom and north of Fordo.

The apparent contradiction was later resolved. The name of the facility was not due to geographic proximity, rather to appreciate the courage of the great number of casualties suffered by the town of Fordo during the Iran-Iraq war. Although, the website of Fordo (make sure your sound is turned off if you are in the office) may not be the most trustworthy source of information, the official name of Iran’s new enrichment plant is Fordo. This is what it will most probably be called in coming IAEA reports (perhaps, FFEP, or Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant?), so use Fordo instead of Qom if you want to be up to date.

IAEA inspections will most definitely resolve the question of exact location, since inspectors have to physically get to the site. The exact coordinates will not become available, so Jane’s satellite imagery are and probably will be our best bet.

Timing

Timing is crucial in determining Iranian intention and whether the disclosure of the new facility met legal requirements. There are several important dates to watch out for – when a decision was made to construct the facility, when the construction actually began, when nuclear material was or will be introduced and when the facility was announced to the IAEA. The only date we know for certain is the last one – October 21.

The White House, learning that Iran had informed the IAEA of the Fordo plant on October 21, told other world leaders during the meetings at the UN in New York on October 23 The US and European nations presented a joint intelligence presentation to the IAEA on October 24, followed by more technical meetings on the 25th. On October 25, Obama, Sarkozy, and Brown made a public announcement about the facility during the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The same day, Salehi announced the facility domestically.

According to Iran, there are no centrifuges installed at the Fordo enrichment plant and no nuclear material has entered the site. Salehi gives a time range from 1.5 to 2 years before the facility is operational, a year before the 6 months mandated by what Ahmadinejad claims is its legal obligations to the IAEA. According to US officials, the facility was most likely to be “at least a few months, perhaps more” from being operational. If the U.S. number is correct, then inspectors are likely to see centrifuges installed. At Natanz, it took about a year to install the first 18-cascades (about 3,000 centrifuges). Even if the Iranians have gotten more efficient and are able to install the machines in half the time, some machine installation would have already begun if operation is less than six months away. If that is the case, it is theoretically possible that nuclear material could have been introduced already. Instead of following normal practice and waiting until the entire facility had been completed, Iran started feeding each cascade at Natanz with UF6 as soon as it had been installed, possibly for political bragging rights and possibly because they were feeling their way forward with a new design. With their greater experience now, we cannot predict which path Iran will follow at Fordo.

The IAEA will do a base environmental sampling, which will show whether nuclear material has been introduced in the facility at some point in time. If the results are positive, then this will be an apparent breach of legal obligations and will open a whole can of worms, raising question where the material came from and bringing up bigger issues of material accountancy and intent.

When did construction of the facility start? US, French, and British intelligence agencies had been aware of the site for several years and claim that the construction began before March 2007, when Iran unilaterally withdrew from the modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements to its Safeguards Agreement. Although we haven’t seen any Iranian official position on when construction started, the Fordo village website (the same one that claims that the enrichment plant is between Fordo and Qom and not between Qom and Tehran) states that construction began in 2006, which would mean that a political decision was made around the time that Iran decided to resume uranium enrichment, which was followed by UN Security Council resolutions condemning the decision. The IAEA may be able to confirm when the decision was made based on documents and interviews with Iranians involved in the project. In the past, Iran has been slow and reluctant to provide these, so it may be some time before the Agency reveals the truth.

Capacity, number and type of machines

To estimate what the Fordo facility was designed to do, we need to know its separative capacity or the number and type of machines that it will hold. The letter to the IAEA and the initial statements from Iranian officials said that those details would be revealed later. Salehi said that Iran hopes to employ a new type of machine, more advanced than the IR-1, which is currently operational at FEP in Natanz. Iran has been testing 4 types of machines (IR-2, IR-2m, IR-3 and IR-4) at PFEP for a while now, so it is foreseeable that one of the new models will soon be ready for industrial application.

According to the US, Iran was planning on installing 3,000 machines, which would have been enough IR-1s for about a bomb’s worth of HEU a year. In an earlier blog, we discussed how US intelligence could have known and what could be done with that many machines. Iranian media have referred to 3,000 machines but Foreign Minister Mottaki said in an NPR interview the plan was to have 7,000 machines.

Iran has probably by now submitted design information to the IAEA as requested. The report will include the intended capacity and throughput of the facility, as well as the expected concentrations of the waste and product. However, inspectors can visually verify the number of machines installed, if those are in place, and can see whether they are different from the machines at Natanz. Visual inspection will not give much information about the potential output of the machines, but that can be deduced based on future data on overall performance.

Legality

According to the US, the construction of the Fordo facility is in clear violation of Security Council resolutions and it has called on Iran to suspend all of its enrichment-related activities there. Iran does not accept these resolutions, claiming they are in contradiction to its right under the NPT to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful goals and also continues operating centrifuges at Natanz.

The US claims that Iran was obligated, under a revision of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements, which Iran agreed to in February 2003 (GOV/2003/40), to announce the facility to the IAEA as soon as a decision was made to begin construction. Iran counters that, in March 2007 it informed the IAEA that it had “suspended” the implementation of the revised Code 3.1 and would “revert” to the 1976 version, which only requires states to submit design information “no later than 180 days before the facility is scheduled to receive nuclear material for the first time” (GOV/2007/22). Salehi attributes this decision to “unfair entry of the U.N. Security Council into Iran’s nuclear dossier”. The IAEA finally concluded that, in accordance with Article 39 of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement, agreed Subsidiary Arrangements cannot be modified unilaterally (GOV/2007/22). The issue was brought up again in the latest IAEA report, noting that Iran had not yet provided design information for the Darkhovin nuclear plant (GOV/2009/55). El Baradei has stated explicitly that “Iran should have informed the IAEA the day they had decided to construct the [Fordo] facility.”

Moreover, the US insists that, in any case, construction started prior to the March 2007 when even Iran agrees it was subject to the Code 3.1 rules and failure to disclose the activity means that Iran was purposefully concealing the enrichment plant. It is possible that Iran would say that they were just digging a hole on the side of a mountain (there are many such installations in that area, as FAS has discovered) and the decision to use it as a centrifuge plant was made much later.

It seems that the Agency is already firm on the issue of legality. Inspections will do little to change that. What we should be expecting in the next report to the Board of Governors is a phrase that starts with “Iran has failed to provide design information”.

Purpose and Intent

According to Salehi, this installation is “semi-industrial,” although the letter to the IAEA described it as a “pilot plant.” Salehi explains that “in any technical issue we have pilot, semi-industrial, and then industrial steps. What we mean by semi-industrial in our nuclear program is that the number of centrifuges is not going to be more than a certain amount and a higher enrichment level is not important.” Later on, he specifies that the facility will enrich up to 5 percent.

Salehi further states that the facility has both passive and active defense – the former referring to its underground location covered by rock and the latter alluding to its proximity to a Revolutionary Guard base equipped with surface-to-air missiles. Persistent hints of Israeli attack, as well as Israel’s bombing of an alleged Syrian nuclear military facility in 2007 and an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 provide grounds for Iranian worry. An interesting explanation is given by a website called the Iranian Revolution Document Center: by building fortified enrichment facilities, the value of an aerial attack against Natanz is greatly diminished since it will not stop Iranian enrichment. Thus, Fordo serves as a deterrent to an attack on Natanz.

The US has insisted, however, that the “size and configuration of the facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program” (for a more thorough analysis, see an earlier blog post). That the Fordo facility might provide a basis for a possible nuclear weapons breakout is an obvious concern, especially if suspicions persist that the Iranians had hoped and expected to keep the facility secret. The size of the facility is suspicious. Based on overhead photos and statements from the Iranians, the facility does not seem to be large enough to be economically viable as an enrichment facility for a commercial nuclear reactor. It might be sized appropriately, however, for a modest nuclear weapon production program. (A plant to power a large nuclear reactor has the capacity to produce about twenty nuclear weapons a year.)

The White House admits that its public announcement on October 25 was prompted by intelligence that Iran knew that the US knew of the facility. Had Iran not found out, the US and its allies would have waited until “actual construction caught up with intent,” although the White House claims that “certainly within the last few months, we think we’ve had a very strong basis on which to make our argument.” Based on this, we can conclude at the time of disclosure Fordo was close to, but not quite at, a stage where construction reveals intent.

It is unclear what intent the US had in mind, since the White House stated that “from the very beginning, [the US] had information indicating that the intent of this facility was as a covert centrifuge facility.” Intent could mean simply to enrich uranium covertly or to produce highly-enriched uranium. However, a covert centrifuge facility makes sense if the intention is to produce weapon-grade uranium. (Iran might also keep it secret to forestall preemptive attack.) But, if the US knew that Iran was planning on producing HEU prior to 2007 (the White House claims that construction started prior to Iran’s unilateral withdrawal from the revised Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements), it raises the question why the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. (There are rumors that the intelligence community will be reconsidering its assessment.) So either the US wasn’t sure what Iran was constructing or the construction started after the NIE came out.

Conclusions

It is important to remember that this IAEA inspection is the first step in bringing Fordo under the safeguards, whose main goal is material accountancy or to ensure that no fissile material is diverted from a nuclear facility. Inspectors will probably do two technical assessments: verify the design information provided by Iran, upon the Agency’s request, and take base environmental samples to see whether nuclear material has been present. Cameras and seals will most likely not be introduced unless there is nuclear material in the vicinity, but key safeguards-relevant points in the facility will be considered based on design plans. The technical part is straightforward and provides important facts, but assessing the veracity of Iran’s statements and proving purpose and intent is hard. Inspectors will collect official documents and may conduct interviews with Iranian officials and scientists involved in the project to gather information on the decision-making, timing, support facilities (where parts are made, etc.) and the wider purpose of the facility in the context of Iran’s fuel cycle.

Inspections will be immediately effective in reconciling issues on the location of the plant (although concrete information will not be made public), enrichment capacity should be stated in the design information and type of machines could be assessed if installation has begun (which Iran is claiming has not). The specific purpose of the Fordo facility, which according to Iran is analogous to that of Natanz – to enrich uranium up to LEU levels for nuclear reactor fuel, is also stated in the documents. However, if Iran is actually uncertaint about the types of machines employed, the design information submitted is most likely preliminary or incomplete and will change. The Agency is firm in that the Islamic Republic should have declared the Fordo plant, as soon as a decision was made to construct it. However, based on past experience with Natanz, other questions, such as timing and purpose in the context of the entire fuel cycle, will be answered gradually as information is gathered by scientific methods, interviews, and collection of documents. This will be compared to information provided by other sources, such as foreign intelligence agencies.

The inspection may cast some light on Iran’s intentions by probing the consistency of its explanation of its overall program. Even if we accept Iran’s explanations entirely, the way the facility was announced shows that they are following only the strict letter of what they believe are their legal requirements. And there is a big gap between Iran and Vienna about what those obligations are.

The only way to prove ill intent may be to show that, even by Iran’s own standards, their story is inconsistent. That will be hard but the overall inspection exercise will provide some hints. Will the Iranians be prepared with what they consider to be all the required documentation? Or will there be long delays that suggest Iran is preparing documentation on the fly to retroactively explain what the inspectors are seeing on the ground? The state of development will give some idea of what the schedule might have been and whether the Iranians are meeting what they consider to be their six month warning time requirement. The Iranians can always drag out construction to meet their prediction of a year and a half to completion. But Natantz gives the world a rough guide to how long construction could have taken. Machines in place will strongly suggest a shorter schedule. The layout and planned number of machines will place some limits on what the capacity of the facility might be.

Once safegurards are in place, the nuclear weapon threat from Fordo will be no greater than from Natantz. The goals of the IAEA will remain the same: to give adequate warning if ever Iran begins to produce material that could be used for a weapon. As Iran’s total enrichment production increases, the relative accuracy of safeguard measurements has to increase to be sure of catching any given quantity of diverted material. If the Fordo facility eventually becomes a significant fraction of Iran’s total enrichment capacity, the stringency of IAEA accounting at Natantz may have to increase.

Of course, there is the question of whether Fordo is simply the only “secret” facility that we know about. The danger is that there are other facilities that can escape safeguards because the IAEA does not know about them. A clandestine enrichment facility would also require a clandestine conversion facility to produce UF6 feedstock because the output of the current facility at Esfahan is under IAEA inventory. We can never know exactly what we don’t know but there may be a silver lining to the cloud: Fordo might be another example of Iran trying, and failing, to keep a facility secret from Western intelligence, suggesting it is hard for Iran, or any other country ,to develop a clandestine capability. That may be too optimistic as a bottom line message, but the good news in this story is that the facility is now known and the IAEA kicked in exactly as it should.

We would like to thank our FAS intern, a native Farsi speaker who wished to remain nameless, for research support to this blog post. Please note that some of the articles referenced here are in Farsi, but can be easily translated using an online translator application.

by Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich

A much anticipated IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear activities was leaked today.  The report indicates that, among other things, Iran has conceded to additional safeguard at Natanz.  This is a welcome development but occurring amidst a contested Iranian election, European threats of increased sanctions, continuing oblique hints of Israeli military action, and US talk of cutting off Iranian gasoline imports if nuclear talks are rejected.  How important are these increased safeguards? Do they represent a change of course for Iran?

Current IAEA Safeguards in Iran
IAEA safeguards ensure that no country with a peaceful nuclear program will use that technology to develop a nuclear weapon.  Specifically, safeguards provide credible assurances that fissile material is not being diverted from declared nuclear facilities.  In accordance with Iran’s Safeguards Agreement, IAEA inspectors monitor any facilities that have nuclear material “of composition and purity suitable for fuel fabrication or for isotopic enrichment.”  This includes the conversion plant in Esfahan, where yellow cake is converted to UF6, and the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, where UF6 with natural concentrations is further enriched to concentrations suitable to fuel a commercial light water reactor.  Uranium mines and ore processing facilities are not monitored.  If Iran ratifies the Additional Protocol, then the IAEA will have access to all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle.

The safeguards objective is to ensure that, if a significant quantity (SQ) of material (that is, roughly enough to make a primitive bomb, in the case of highly enriched uranium, about 25 kg) is diverted, then the diversion will be detected within a certain time.  In the case of Iran, the IAEA guarantees detection within one month of diversion of one SQ and a high probability that they can detect much smaller diversion.

Safeguards at enrichment plants are mostly based on material accountancy, which confirms that declared material in a facility is not secretly diverted. Safeguards start with an initial report by Iran of all nuclear material that is subject to safeguards, supplemented by design information of the facilities where this material is contained.  This information is confirmed by the IAEA during design information verification (DIV).  This information is used to identify general information about the facility (location, capacity, throughput) , as well as strategic points relevant to material accountancy (locations where key measurements are made and inventory locations).

The latest IAEA report (GOV/2009/55) states that Iran has not yet implemented early provisions of design information in accordance with the revised Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part, which would require Iran to notify the agency of the construction of new facilities or modifications to existing ones as soon as such a decision has been authorized by the government or the plant operator.  The original agreement required Iran to submit such information no later than 180 days before the introduction of nuclear material into the facility (GOV/2003/40).

Based on these data, the IAEA and the Iranians then agree to the locations for containment and surveillance measures. Containment measures verify the physical integrity of an area or storage container. For example, this is done by placing seals on uranium cylinders under autoclaves.  Surveillance cameras are placed at key locations to record activities at the facility ensuring that no unauthorized movement of nuclear material occurs.  In addition, the cameras may confirm that, for example, the Iranians are making changes in the connections among centrifuges.  Re-piping a cascade would be one of the ways to produce highly enriched uranium.  The images from the cameras are periodically downloaded by IAEA inspectors. Camera cases are designed to reveal any attempt to tamper with them between inspections.

Iran submits reports to the Agency on uranium inventories and material flows.  Inspectors verify this information during on-site inspections by comparing declared amounts to Iran’s daily operating records.  Under the Safeguards Agreement, inspectors have the right to unannounced inspections.  In Iran, 24 inspections are done per year, half of which are unannounced.  Furthermore, inspectors perform physical inventory verification (PIV) once a year and have the option of interim inventory checks as well.  A PIV is a kind of super inspection in which storage containers are weighed to determine actual quantities of uranium at each enrichment stage and samples are taken to confirm enrichment levels.

Increased Safeguards: Two Components
Beefing up safeguards at Natanz is not a sudden gesture of Iranian cooperation with the IAEA.  The changes are not drastic and are consistent with the current Iran-IAEA Safeguards Agreement.  Safeguard changes are in response to accounting problems and Agency requests already laid out in the last two IAEA reports issued in June and February this year.

Part of the enhanced safeguards will be improvements in Iran’s own inventory estimating.  There was great brouhaha when the results of the November 2008 PIV were released in the Agency’s February 2009 report, revealing more uranium than the Iranians had declared.  Several times in the press and elsewhere, this was described as the IAEA “discovering” Iranian uranium when, in fact, it simply revealed that Iran’s ability to estimate its own throughput was inadequate.  FAS wrote a blog on this issue.

The changes are due, in part, to “the increasing number of cascades being installed at FEP” and “increased rate of production of LEU at the facility” (GOV/2009/35).  The June report states that containment and surveillance measures need to be improved “in order for the agency to continue to fully meet its safeguards objectives.”

 

 

Improving Accounting
The IAEA has been insisting that Iran improve its own inventory control to make its declarations more credible.  Between PIVs, IAEA inspectors base their reports on Iranian logbook data of how much material has been put through the machines and Iranian calculations of capacity.  Iranian scientists do not have precise measurements of total production because some cylinders of UF6 are still connected to the cascade output, partially full, and cannot be weighed.  Because filling a cylinder with enriched uranium takes a long time, Iranian engineers have developed an algorithm to estimate how much uranium has been enriched and is in each cylinder.

There have been two PIVs at Natanz – one in November 2008 and in December 2007.  Iran started putting up machines in February 2007, so the first PIV reported only small amounts—75 kg—of  product (GOV/2008/4).  There were no reports of material enriched prior to the 2007 PIV.  Therefore, the first real comparison between Iranian logbook data and IAEA physical inventory results was in February 2009, when the report with the 2008 PIV came out in public.  It was clear that the algorithm estimating the amount of feed was very good, because logbook results matched IAEA’s findings.  In the case of the product, this was not so.  There was a 209 kg difference between Iranian logbook data and the results of the PIV, which amounted to about a third increase in product as declared previously.

Problems with Iran’s mass spectrometer – the device that measures the concentration of U-235 or the enrichment of the UF6, have also been reported. This would account for any differences between Iranian overall product enrichment measurements and what was recorded by the Agency.

An additional explanation cited in today’s report is the uncertainty in the amount of UF6 in cold traps.  Cold traps are cryogenic traps that hold the output of the vacuum pumps, which are used to maintain the vacuum inside the centrifuge casing and collect small amounts of uranium gas leaked through the centrifuge rotor shaft.  The amount of material contained in the cold traps is measured only by heating them up and cleaning them out so they are missed from day-to-day inventory control.  The report states that a difference of 538 kg could result from “mainly a hold up in the various cold traps,” and that such a large amount of material is “not inconsistent with the design information provided by Iran” (GOV/2009/55).

Containment and Surveillance Changes
An increasing enrichment capacity requires additions to existing safeguards, according to the June IAEA report. The FEP design information shows that the plant is divided into two cascade halls:  Cascade Hall A and B. Cascade Hall A has 8 units. As of the end of May 2009 one unit (A24) was completed. About a third of the total capacity of Unit A26 was operational, while another third had been installed, but operating under vacuum.  In other words, as the number of centrifuges increases and the operating area of the plant increases, the IAEA needs more monitoring assets on the ground just to stay even.  In addition, the IAEA is calling on Iran to address long-standing problems with their own inventory accounting.

Part of the enhanced IAEA monitoring capability may simply be more efficient use of current assets, such as surveillance cameras.  Standard practice at other enrichment plants is to construct the entire enrichment plant and only upon completion begin feeding the machines with UF6.  In contrast, Iran starts up each cascade of 164 coupled centrifuges as it is completed.  Thus, at the Natanz facility, there is an ongoing process of installing new centrifuge cascades in the same hall where previously installed machines are already operating.   Elsewhere, common practice is to have IAEA surveillance only in storage areas, keeping an eye on the seals on UF6 cylinders to make sure they are not tampered with.  In Iran, this is more of a problem, since new centrifuges are continually coming on line.  In theory, output of new cascades could be diverted.  This is why Iran has agreed to put surveillance around the cascade area as well.  For this to be affective, the cameras need to be able to have a clear view of the technicians to make sure that they are not removing nuclear material. This was less of a problem in the past since there were few cascades, but this is changing with the increase of plant throughput. As construction takes place at several units at once, inspectors have problems monitoring who is coming and going, especially since some new units may be out of view camera in their original positions.

A normal centrifuge plant requires very little personnel presence in the production areas.  The numerous workers installing centrifuges adjacent to the production area complicates the IAEA monitoring.  For example, Iranian attempts to change the piping on existing machines could be hidden within other, permissible, construction work.  If the operating machines were isolated from the construction, even by a simple partition, the additional activity of reworking the piping would stand out more clearly.  This would allow IAEA photo analysts to more effectively focus their efforts.  Iran may also accept some work restrictions, such as leaving equipment in front of a surveillance camera for some agreed length of time to allow its identification before moving it to another part of the plant.  Iran continues to resist remote monitoring so data from camera are downloaded when inspectors arrive on site and it analyzed later.

Political Implications
Some have suggested that Iranian compliance with IAEA requests is a sign that Teheran is preparing the ground for negotiations.   Iranian officials themselves have stated that they are open to talks without preconditions and there was even a domestic proposal for an enrichment halt.  The statement was quickly corrected making Iranian intentions as ambiguous as ever.

From a technical perspective, we believe that Iranian concessions on enhancing safeguards at Natanz do no present a fundamental change nor do they cause Iran much inconvenience. The changes are proportionate with the continued build up in the number of centrifuges and failure to implement them would have soon amounted to a violation of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement.

We should not read much political significance into Iran’s acceptance of additional safeguards.  Whether Iran is cooperating with inspections because of, or in spite of, the threat of increased sanctions, their centrifuge program is continuing.  Indeed, cooperation with the IAEA helps to weaken international political support for sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear program.  We could say that Iran would rather have IAEA inspections than violate its Safeguards Agreement and suffer greater international sanctions, but we believe that agreeing to additional safeguards monitoring is not, by itself, an indication that Iran is willing to sit down at the negotiating table, let alone give up its centrifuge program.

By Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich

Yesterday, on Iran’s national Nuclear Technology Day, President Ahmadinejad announced the country’s latest nuclear advances, which seem to have become an important source of national pride and international rancor. April 9 marks the day when Iran claimed to have enriched its first batch of uranium in 2006. Yesterday, Ahmadinejad inaugurated Iran’s Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP) at Isfahan and announced the installation of a new “more accurate” type of centrifuge at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz.

A fuel fabrication facility, the last element of the front-end fuel cycle, is where nuclear reactor fuel is made. For light water reactors (LWR), such as the one in Bushehr, uranium is mined, turned into yellow cake, and converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the UF6 is enriched using centrifuges, converted into uranium oxide pellets, and made into fuel rods, which go into the reactor core. For pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWR), such as the one in Arak, uranium doesn’t need to be enriched, so the yellow cake is directly converted to uranium oxide pellets.

Fuel fabrication is not nearly the technical challenge of building and operating a cascade of centrifuges, but it is not trivial either. No one wants a multi-billion dollar reactor contaminated because a fuel element has failed, so quality control is vital. Fuel rods must not rupture or corrode while in the reactor, which requires careful control of the purity of materials and integrity of seals.

Iran has claimed that its uranium enrichment program is meant for energy production and is wholly peaceful, while much of the rest of the world has worried that the centrifuges in Natanz are really intended to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a nuclear weapon. The Iranians claim that they need to enrich their own uranium because, based on past experience, they cannot depend on foreign suppliers. The argument of energy independence rang hollow because Iran did not have a fuel fabrication facility. This meant that their indigenously enriched uranium would still have to be exported for fabrication into fuel elements and re-imported, leaving them still vulnerable to foreign pressure. If they now have an operational fabrication facility, they will complete the front-end nuclear fuel production, making their energy independence arguments for enrichment more plausible, or at least less implausible.

Although, it is not news that the FMP, whose construction began in 2004, is operational (this was announced in the February 2009 IAEA report), the advent of a fuel fabrication facility itself is significant. Only three countries, one tenth of those possessing nuclear power plants, have all the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mines to reactor fuel manufacture. It so happens, that all three countries also posses nuclear weapons. When Iran’s nuclear reactor is operational, Iran will have independent control of all the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, thereby advancing their claim for energy independence.

But Iran has not closed the front-end fuel cycle yet. The FMP was originally planned to produce nuclear fuel for the heavy water reactor in Arak, which is still under construction, not for the soon to be in operation light water reactor in Bushehr. Yet yesterday, an Iranian news source reported that, “Iran has completely gained access to management of nuclear fuel production which makes the country self-sufficient in production of nuclear fuel for heavy and light water reactors.” [emphasis added] In another article, IRNA even mentions the capacity: “FMP is to produce 10 tons of natural fuel each year used for 40 megawatts heavy-water reactors in Arak and 30 tons of five percent enriched uranium for light water reactors.”

According to the February IAEA report, after an inspection at FMP, the IAEA inspectors concluded that “the process line for the production of natural uranium pellets for the heavy water reactor fuel had been completed and fuel rods were being produced” [emphasis added]. Because neither the IAEA nor Iran has previously mentioned FMP’s LWR-fuel-producing capability, we are skeptical about what the plant can actually do. We suspect it is more likely that Iran, known for exaggerating its nuclear capabilities, means that the plant could potentially produce fuel for a LWR.

Light water reactor (LWR) fuel is not the same as heavy water reactor (HWR) fuel. The uranium oxide fuel pellets are similar, except the LWR fuel is made from expensive, hard-to-get enriched uranium and the HWR fuel is made from cheap natural uranium. In both cases, the pellets are stacked and covered with clad zircalloy (zirconium, coated with iron and other trace elements). However, the geometry and construction of the fuel element assemblies is very different (personal communication from Ehud Greenspan, a nuclear engineering professor at UC Berkley). A HWR has much simpler fuel assemblies than those of a LWR. The PWR rods have a larger diameter, are shorter, and have a thinner coating of metal. [pp 241-291] Because of their size, LWR fuel rods have to be free standing and have a greater power density. LWR fuel production also requires greater attention to criticality dangers.[pp 33-39] All bundles in a HWR are identical, they do not have different uranium concentration like those in the LWR, which can range anywhere from 3 to 5 percent LEU and are arranged in special patterns optimize the neutron flux throughout the core.

In short, the principles and technology of fuel manufacture for both LWR and PHWR are close, but the fuel rod design is very different. So, if Iran had the technological capacity to do one, they could very well do both. But can this happen at the same facility?

India is the only country that produces nuclear fuel for both its LWR (BWR) reactor and its PHWR at the same location – the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad. India imports its enriched uranium. Although zirconium production plants are the same for both fuel types, the conversion of raw material (in one case natural uranium and in the other enriched uranium) to UO2 pellets is done in two separate facilities. The fuel rods are also assembled at two distinct locations within the complex: the Ceramic Fuel Fabrication Plant and the Enriched Uranium Fuel Plant.

Moreover, the Russian-built light water reactor in Bushehr, whose construction was completed this year and will soon be in operation, uses Russian-made fuel rods. Iran and Russia have signed a long-term agreement for fuel supply and it is unlikely that Iran would risk damaging the VVER-426 reactor with domestically manufactured fuel rods, especially when it does not have the design plans, which Russia is not going to offer up. So, Iranian theoretical LWR fuel manufacturing capacity will at best have to wait for the construction of another nuclear reactor, at least ten years from now.

According to the Nuclear Energy Agency, if a county wants to be independent from foreign nuclear fuel vendors in a fairly short time, a heavy water reactor is the way to go. It is cheap and simple: uranium does not have to be enriched, natural uranium is easily converted to uranium oxide, the design is simple and the fuel rods are all the same. It requires only a small factory and has lower labor costs. In addition, a PWR can be designed to have a continuous fueling system so it does not have to be shut down to be refueled. Countries with moderate technological capabilities like South Korea, Argentina, and Romania have national heavy water fuel fabrication facilities. So, it is understandable why Iran would think this approach is attractive.

Yet Iranian motives are still not clear cut.

On one hand, the inauguration of a fuel fabrication facility is good news. This means that Iran really is trying to produce reactor fuel and this brings legitimacy to their enrichment claim. Moreover, a fuel fabrication plant in itself has no dual use if viewed a separate part of the fuel cycle. Scott Kemp from Princeton mentioned not too long ago that if Iran converted its UF6 to UO2, this would act as a safeguard. If Iran started the fuel fabrication process for a LWR, turned most of the LEU stockpiled at Natanz into uranium oxide pellets and locked it away in zircalloy tubes, this would greatly reduce the possibility of batch recycling the LEU to bomb-grade uranium.

However, if the FMP produces nuclear fuel for the heavy water reactor in Arak this is bad news. Heavy water reactors might be of interest for a nuclear power program because they do not need enriched uranium. Canada, for example, operates only heavy water reactors (known as CANDU) domestically and has sold these commercially. But heavy water reactors are also ideally suited for producing plutonium that can be used in a nuclear weapon. Once again, Iranian moves can be interpreted as moving toward energy independence or toward a nuclear weapons capability, or both.

This post was last updated on 30 September 2009 due to a factual error in the number of countries possessing all the components of the fuel cycle. Only the US, Russia and China currently have all the elements – France shut down its last uranium mine in 2001 and India has only a test enrichment plant and actually imports its enriched uranium.

By Ivan Oelrich and Ivanka Barzashka

Last week, the New York Times and the Financial Times USA ran stories that implied that Iran had been hiding enriched uranium and had been caught red-handed during the most recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) physical inventory inspection. While supposedly based on the IAEA report (GOV/2009/8), the articles more closely followed the ISIS analysis of the report.  [Jeffery Lewis, as usual, also has good analysis and comments on Arms Control Wonk.] The IAEA report itself raises few alarm bells. Yes, the Iranians are continuing to enrich uranium; yes, they claim it is exclusively for a civilian nuclear reactor program, a claim for which no one can provide credible assurances, and, yes, every day they enrich uranium, they are closer to having enough for nuclear weapon capability, once that political decision is made. But the IAEA report does not reveal any sudden jump in enrichment capability or even uranium inventory and it goes out of its way to say that the result of the inspection is consistent with what was previously declared by Iran, within “the measurement uncertainties normally associated with enrichment plants of similar throughput”. So what is the issue here?

The Financial Times headline, “Iran holds enough uranium for bomb” with the subtitles “UN report reveals leap in nuclear stocks” and “Capacity breaches Israel’s ‘red line’ limit,” and the New York Times headline, “Iran Has More Enriched Uranium than Thought” are both more provocative than warranted by the IAEA report itself. Both articles report that, in the most recent IAEA report from 19 February, the estimated inventory of low-enriched uranium (LEU) had jumped by a third. The New York Times said that the IAEA had “discovered” an additional 460 pounds (or 209 kg) of LEU. This number is wrong to begin with because the IAEA reported an additional 209 kg, not of uranium, but of uranium hexafluoride (UF6). UF6 is about 68 percent uranium, so there is only an additional 142 kg of uranium in 209 kg of UF6. We will come back to this.

Reasoning Behind the Headlines

“Discovered” is stretching. The origin of that 209 kg is the difference between the amount of enriched UF6 reported in IAEA documents GOV/2009/8 and GOV/2008/59 — two consecutive reports for Iran’s inventory as of November 2008. The IAEA report of 19 November 2008 states that from February 2007 to 7 November 2008 “…based on the operator’s daily accounting records, Iran had produced approximately 630 kg of low enriched UF6 [uranium hexafluoride]. All nuclear material at FEP [Fuel Enrichment Plant], as well as all installed cascades, remain under Agency containment and surveillance.”

The next IAEA report, released just last Thursday 19 February 2009, contained the results of the IAEA physical inventory verification (PIV) that took place between 24 and 26 November 2008. According to the PIV, Iran had produced 839 kg of low enriched UF6 from February 2007 to 17 November 2008.

The most important point is that these two “inventories” were very different animals. The 7 November inventory was based on adding up the entries in the operators’ logbooks and developing an estimate of overall LEU stockpile. For the PIV, the IAEA actually measured how much LEU the Iranians had on hand. Ideally, the two should match quite closely, so one would expect that the November LEU according to the two reports would be the same. If there is a discrepancy, then Iran may be hiding something.

Is there a discrepancy?

So if there is an extra 209 kg of UF6, why doesn’t the IAEA report scream fraud? Because according to the IAEA reports, all the quantities of UF6 produced balance out with the measured inputs so no uranium has gone missing and none that was hidden has suddenly appeared. All of the uranium and enrichment equipment was under constant IAEA monitoring so nothing was “discovered” except in a bookkeeping sense. The Iranians knew during the 7 November inspection that the IAEA measurement verification was coming a fortnight later. The Iranians are at least months away from getting significant quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU), so it seems unlikely that they were trying to hide any LEU inventory for only a couple of weeks to get any head start on the IAEA inspectors.

The logbook inventory and the measurement inventory took place ten days apart. Could that account for more the difference? Most likely not. In the following measurement period, from 17 November 2008 to 31 January 2009 ( 75 days) the Iranians enriched an additional 171 kg of UF6 or 2.28 kg UF6/day. Similarly, from 30 August 2008 to 7 November 2008 Iran enriched an average of 2.17 kg UF6/day. So from November 7th to the 17th,we might expect them to enrich an additional 22 to 23 kg, or only about ten percent of the 209 kg difference we are concerned with. So the additional 10 days’ production cannot account for the difference.

Explanations.

It is more plausible that the Iranians, novices at the centrifuge business, have not developed sophisticated measurement and recording systems to track their own production. The IAEA reports do not contain enough detail to determine the source of the discrepancy but there are many possibilities. We do not know what containers the Iranians use to store their UF6 (the international standard is a steel cylinder called the 30B, which can hold up to 2.5 tons of UF6 and is too big for Iran’s program).  UF6 is a solid at room temperature and pressure. It is stored by pumping the gas from the centrifuges into a cylinder, where the UF6 condenses into a white solid. Because the gas condenses on the inside, the gas pressure does not go up as more gas is pumped in. Knowing how much UF6 is in the tank is not as simple, therefore, as reading a pressure gauge –the mass of the cylinders must be measured. The storage containers can be weighed continually; that is, the cylinders essentially sit on a scale but perhaps the Iranians don’t do that. If cylinders are moved from the production area to a storage area only when full and are then weighed, jumps in measured inventory are expected.

The 17 November PIV was the second IAEA physical inventory since Iran began enrichment in February 2007.  The first one was done in December 2007. The IAEA report (GOV/2008/4) announcing the results of the December 2007 PIV did not report any inconsistencies in inventory or Iran’s technical problems reporting LEU. The report was also the first time that enriched amounts of UF6 were disclosed and it commented that “the throughput of the facility had been well below its declared design capacity.” There are no prior published logbook enrichment amounts to compare the December PIV results to, probably because of the small cascade throughput. Consequently, we do not have evidence that Iran has ever understated production previously and obviously we have no comparison for historical logbook-to-inventory accuracy.

Not Enough for a Breakout…Yet.

By “breakout” they mean that, by starting with LEU, Iran could use its enrichment capacity to more quickly produce a bomb’s worth of the highly-enriched uranium needed for a bomb than it could if it were starting with natural uranium. While true in theory, the numbers presented by the IAEA indicate that Iran is not quite there.

Natural uranium has two isotopes (well, a trace of a third, but we can ignore that). In natural uranium, the U-238 is 99.3 percent and the U-235 is 0.7 percent. A reactor requires uranium that is 3-5 percent U-235 and a bomb requires uranium that is 90 or so percent U-235. By saying that the Iranians have enough LEU to further enrich to make a bomb, both articles are depending on simplistic calculations contained in the ISIS summary that look solely at the amount of U-235 in the LEU and see that it adds up to the 25 kg that is estimated to be required of a bomb. But just taking the quantity of LEU and multiplying by the U-235 concentration does not work because not all of the U-235 is recovered.

It is amazing how helpful even a little arithmetic can be. Taking the IAEA number, as of last November, the Iranians had fed 9956 kg of natural UF6 into their machines. Natural uranium is 0.71 percent U-235 so 9956 kg of UF6 contains 47.6 kg of U-235. During this time, the Iranians produced 839 kg of 3.5 percent LEU UF6. Multiply that out and we discover that the LEU contains 20.0 kg of U-235, which seems to imply there is not quite enough U-235 for a bomb, assumed to require 25 kg or so. (Note that if the calculations are redone using the masses, not of uranium, but of UF6, then the result is more than 29 kg, which would be enough for a bomb if it were pure uranium, not UF6. We suspect there is some confusion in the uranium-to-UF6 conversions.) But note that that also means that 27.8 kg of U-235 ended up in the waste or “tails,” which is to say that the Iranians are throwing away 58 percent of the U-235 that goes into the their machines. If the Iranians just recycled their LEU through the existing centrifuges, they would still throw away roughly the same fraction of U-235 so, while the U-235 is, indeed, present in the LEU, the Iranians cannot get it out in a pure form as easily as these articles suggest.

These numbers also indicate that the tails have a U-235 concentration of .45 percent, which is about double the normal commercial tails concentration. In normal centrifuge operation, natural uranium is fed into a set of centrifuges and the product is slightly enriched in U-235 and the waste is slightly depleted in U-235. The product of the first group of centrifuges is fed into another group for further concentration and so one until the desired concentration is reached. The waste stream is not just thrown away, however, and other centrifuges work to reconcentrate the waste to recover as much of the U-235 as practical. The high concentration of U-235 in the waste suggests that the Iranians have made a decision to get as much enriched product as quickly as possible with a given centrifuge capability. This is probably bad news for the rest of the world because it is consistent with getting a small amount of bomb material quickly, rather than a large amount of nuclear fuel eventually.

Another way to look at the problem is to consider that the Iranians have two constraints here: one is uranium and the other is enrichment capacity. The latest IAEA report states that the Iranians produced an additional 171 kg of 3.5 percent LEU UF6 between 17 November and 31 January. That is 116 kg of uranium equivalent over a period of 75 days. If the tails are still .45 percent U-235, that works out to 391 kg Separative Work Units (SWUs) or 5.2 kg-SWU/day.

If the Iranians had enough 3.5 percent LEU to feed into their machines to go for HEU, then, with 5.2 kg-SWU/day capacity, they could get 25 kg of 90 percent U-235 in 214 days if they left their tails at 1.2 percent U-235. However, they currently do not have enough uranium for this option. If they reduce the tails to 0.2 percent U-235, they will extract more U-235 and stretch their uranium supply, but then the enrichment to HEU of enough material for a bomb mass would take 384 days.

It’s Bad Enough, Don’t Make It Worse

We do not want to seem to be apologists for Iran. Their uranium enrichment program makes no economic sense. It could be consistent with a nuclear power fuel program but it is also consistent with a nuclear weapons program. It seems undeniable that Iran wants to at least maintain the option of developing a nuclear weapon. An Iranian nuclear weapon would be a danger to the world, and to Iran. We believe the rest of the world should work hard to avoid such a development but the world should develop policies based on the best analysis available. The hard facts are bad enough, there is no need for exaggeration.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

Rumors about such options have existed for years, but the document is the first authoritative evidence that fear of weapons of mass destruction attacks from outside Russia and China caused the Bush administration to broaden U.S. nuclear targeting policy by ordering the military to prepare a series of new options for nuclear strikes against regional proliferators.

Responding to nuclear weapons planning guidance issued by the White House shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, U.S. Strategic Command created a series of scenario driven nuclear strike options against regional states. Illustrations in the document identify the states as North Korea and Libya as well as SCUD-equipped countries that appear to include Iran, Iraq (at the time), and Syria – the very countries mentioned in the NPR. The new strike options were incorporated into the strategic nuclear war plan that entered into effect on March 1, 2003.

The creation of the new strike options contradict statements by government officials who have insisted that the NPR did not change U.S. nuclear policy but decreased the role of nuclear weapons.

Non-Denial Denials and a Few Hints

When portions of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) were leaked in the Los Angeles Times in March 2002, government officials responded by playing down the importance of the document and its effect on nuclear planning. And officials have since continue to credit the NPR with reducing the reliance on nuclear weapons.

The NPR is “not a plan, it’s not an operational plan,” then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers insisted on CNN the day after the NPR was leaked. “It’s a policy document. And it simply states our deterrence posture, of which nuclear weapons are a part….And it’s been the policy of this country for a long time, as long as I’ve been a senior officer, that the president would always reserve the right up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if that was appropriate. So that continues to be the policy.”

A formal statement published by the Department of Defense added that the NPR “does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning,” but that the military simply “continues to plan for a broad range of contingencies and unforeseen threats to the United States and its allies.”

Most recently, on October 9, 2007, Christina Rocca, the U.S. permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament, told the First Committee of the U.N. General Assembly that the United States has been “reducing the…degree of reliance on [nuclear] weapons in national security strategies….It was precisely the new thinking embodied in the NPR that allowed for the historic reductions we are continuing today.”

Yet a few officials hinted in 2002 that the same guidance expanded nuclear planning. “There are nations out there developing weapons of mass destruction,” then Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “Prudent planners have to give some consideration as to the range of options the president should have available to him to deal with these kinds of threat,” he said.

The declassified U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) document shows that one of the first results of “the new thinking” of the NPR was the creation of a series of new nuclear strike options against regional states.

A Series of Regional Options

The 26-page declassified document, an excerpt from a 123-page STRATCOM briefing on the production of the 2003 strategic nuclear war plan known as OPLAN 8044 Revision 03, includes two slides that describe the planning against “regional states.” The first of these slides lists a “series of [deleted] options” directed against regional countries with weapons of mass destruction programs. The planning is “scenario driven,” according to the document. The majority of the document deals with targeting of Russia and China, but virtually all of those sections were withheld by the declassification officer.

The names of the “regional states” were also withheld, but three images used to illustrate the planning were released, and they leave little doubt who the regional states are: One of the images is the North Korean Taepo Dong 1 missile; another image shows the Libyan underground facility at Tarhuna; and the third image shows a SCUD B short-range ballistic missile. The SCUD B image is not country-specific, but the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center report Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat from 2003 listed 12 countries with SCUD B missiles: Belarus, Bulgaria, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Yemen. Five of these were listed in the NPR as examples of countries that were “immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies…setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities”: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria.

The inclusion of regional nuclear counterproliferaiton strike options into the national (strategic) war plan is a new development because such scenarios have normally been thought to reside at a lower level than the national strategic plan, which has traditionally been focused on targeting of Russia and China. During the 1990s, STRATCOM developed adaptive planning capabilities that enabled quick production of strikes against “rogue” states if necessary, but “there were no immediate plans on the shelf for target packages to give to bombers or missile crews,” a former senior Pentagon official told Washington Post in 2002. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 changed that by producing executable strike options to the nuclear forces.

The “target base” for the regional states is outlined in the STRATCOM document, but everything except the title has been withheld. But the target base probably included weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the states to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies. The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) that entered into effect one year after OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 stated in part: “U.S. nuclear forces must be capable of, and be seen to be capable of, destroying those critical war-making and war-supporting assets and capabilities that a potential enemy leadership values most and that it would rely on to achieve its own objectives in a post-war world.”

The creation of a “target base” indicates that the planning went further than simple retaliatory punishment with one or a few weapons, but envisioned actual nuclear warfighting intended to annihilate a wide range of facilities in order to deprive the states the ability to launch and fight with WMD. The new plan formally broadened strategic nuclear targeting from two adversaries (Russia and China) to a total of seven.

Iraq presumably disappeared from the war plan again after U.S. forces invaded the country in March 2003 – only three weeks after OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 went into effect – and discovered that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Libya presumably disappeared after December 2003, when President Muammar Gaddafi declared that he was giving up efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The nuclear strike plans against Iran, North Korea and Syria, however, presumably were carried forward into the next OPLAN 8044 Revision 05 from October 2004, a plan that was still in effect as recently as July 2007.

New Guidance for the Regions

The STRATCOM document indicates that National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-14 signed by President Bush on June 28, 2002, was the key While House guidance that resulted in the incorporation into the strategic nuclear war plan of strike options against regional proliferators.

Very little has been disclosed about NSPD-14, except that it laid out Presidential nuclear weapons planning guidance and provided broad overarching directions to the agencies and commands for nuclear weapon planning. As such, NSPD-14 might have been replacing Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-60 signed by President Clinton in November 1997 as the primary White House guidance for nuclear weapons planning. PDD-60 reportedly also required planning against proliferators, but the new strike options incorporated into Revision 03 were “notable changes” compared with the previous plan, according to the STRATCOM document.

Flowing from NSPD-14 were several other important guidance documents that deepened the commitment to targeting regional proliferators. The first was the JSCP Transitional Guidance in June 2002, which directed changes to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP). JSCP includes a nuclear annex or supplement, known as JSCP-N, that give detailed nuclear planning guidance to the unified and regional commanders. The new JSCP-N was published on October 1, 2002. Another document was the NUWEP (Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy) Transitional Guidance signed on August 29, 2002, which led to the publication of NUWEP-04 in April 2004.

Three months after NSPD-14, on September 14, 2002, President Bush also signed NSPD-17 (National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction), a directive that articulated a comprehensive strategy to counter nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. NSPD-17 reaffirmed that, if necessary, the United States will use nuclear weapons against anyone using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its forces abroad, and friends and allies, according to Washington Times. But a top-secret appendix to NSPD 17 specifically named Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya as being among the countries that are the central focus of the new strategy, and that options included nuclear weapons. Those options were in place with OPLAN 8044 Revision 03. The motivation for the new strategy, one participant in the interagency process that drafted it told Washington Post, was the conclusion that “traditional nonproliferation has failed, and now we’re going into active interdiction.” NSPD-17 is sometimes also called the preemption doctrine.

The regional strike plans also found their way into the draft Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (Joint Publication 3-12), which was under preparation within the military at the time Revision 03 was created. Yet the doctrine showed that planning went beyond retaliation and included preemptive strikes. The second draft from March 2005 listed five scenarios where use of nuclear weapons might be requested:

• To counter an adversary intending to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S., multinational, or allies forces or civilian populations;
• To counter an imminent attack from an adversary’s biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy;
• To attack on adversary installations including weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies; [this was probably the “target base” in OPLAN 8044 Revision 03]
• To counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces;
• To demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary WMD use.

After I disclosed this development in an article in Arms Control Today in September 2005 and the Washington Post followed up with a front-page story, sixteen members of Congress – including the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee – reacted by writing to the president to object to what they considered to be a “drastic shift in U.S. nuclear policy.”

Embarrassed by the exposure, the Pentagon canceled not only the draft doctrine (and four other related doctrine documents) but also the existing Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations document that had been publicly available on the Joint Chiefs of Staff web site for a decade. A Joint Staff official explained that the documents would not be published, revised or classified, explaining that that they had been found not to be real doctrine documents but “pseudo doctrine” documents discussing nuclear policy issues. The public “visibility led a lot of people to question why we have them,” he said.

From SIOP to OPLAN 8044: A “Family of Plans”

There is no indication that cancelation of the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations documents changed nuclear policy. The declassified STRATCOM document describes OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 as “a transitional step toward the new TRIAD and future war plans.” That transition began long before the “New Triad” phrase was coined by the 2001 NPR, and has gradually transformed the top-heavy self-standing Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) to a broader set of strike options applicable in a wider range of scenarios against more adversaries. When preparation of Revision 03 began in March 2002, the combat employment portion of the strategic nuclear war plan was still known as the SIOP, but the name had to be changed to reflect the emerging multitude of strike options.

As the Joint Staff started to review the new war plan, STRATCOM commander Admiral James Ellis wrote to General Myers that the name SIOP did not properly describe the new plan. “STRATCOM is changing the nation’s nuclear war plan from a single, large, integrated plan to a family of plans applicable in a wider range of scenarios,” Ellis explained with a reference to Revision 03. The first STRATCOM commander, General George Lee Butler, had tried to change the name in 1992, but with no luck. Butler wanted to change the name to National Strategic Response Plans. Eleven years later, Admiral Ellis tried again. The SIOP name, he said, was a Cold War legacy.

This time, the JCS chairman was more receptive. On February 8, 2003, only one month before Revision 03 went into effect, General Myers authorized STRATCOM to formally change the name to reflect the creation the “new family of plans.” Yet Myers was concerned that confusion might arise “between the basic USSTRATCOM OPLAN 8044 and the combat employment portion of that OPLAN, currently known as the SIOP.” The solution, he decided, was to continue to call the basic plan OPLAN 8044, but incorporate the term OPLAN 8044 Revision (FY) to describe that portion of the plan currently known as the SIOP. The Revision number (FY) would correspond to the fiscal year the combat employment plan was put into effect. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 of March 1, 2003, was the first plan to carry the new name.

The new strike options apparently were carried forward into OPLAN 8044 Revision 05, the next strategic war plan that entered into effect on October 1, 2004. This plan was described as a “major revamping” of the U.S. strategic war plan, which, according to General Myers, “provides more flexible options to assure allies, and dissuade, deter, and if necessary, defeat adversaries in a wider range of contingencies.” OPLAN 8044 Revision 05 was still in effect as of July 2007 (for a chronology of U.S. nuclear guidance and war plans under the Bush administration, go here).

Claims About Reducing Reliance On Nuclear Weapons

Officials frequently credit the NPR with having significantly reduced the reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. nuclear policy. The basis for this claim is that non-nuclear capabilities also should play a role in deterring potential adversaries, an goal exemplified by the incorporation of conventional strike options into OPLAN 8044 Revision 05, the war plan than followed OPLAN 8044 Revision 03, and the removal of Russia as an “immediate contingency.”

“The United States has set in motion an entirely new way of looking at the role of nuclear weapons in our defense strategy,” Jackie W. Sanders, U.S. Ambassador and Special Representative of the President for the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, told the 2005 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. “I speak, Mr. Chairman, of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, of 2001. The United States has undertaken reviews of this sort in the past, but the 2001 NPR is unique, and fully consistent with Article VI. The 2001 NPR established a New Triad of strategic capabilities, one that places far less reliance on nuclear weapons to meet U.S. defense policy goals…. Let me emphasize, Mr. Chairman, that the New Triad concept resulting from the NPR, in principle and in practice, will reduce reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. It reflects a totally new vision of the future, and is fully consistent with our indisputable resolve to implement Article VI.”

But while some conventional weapons are being incorporated into the national war plan and planning against Russia is not done in the same way it was during the Cold War, the NPR (building on the 1997 PDD-60) and White House guidance also resulted in an increased nuclear targeting of China and, as the declassified STRATCOM document illustrates, an geographic expansion of national-level nuclear targeting to regional proliferators. Prudent or not, this is not a development that is highlighted by U.S. diplomats at NPT conferences.

Description of Document

The declassified document is heavily redacted and consists of 26 of a total of 123 slides from the Revision 03 Periodic Update of the U.S. strategic war plan that went into effect on March 1, 2003. The plan was the first strategic war plan to carry the new name Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8044 Revision 03, which replaced the Single Operational Strategic Plan (SIOP) name used since 1960. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 replaced SIOP-03 from October 1, 2002.

The document describes six parts of the new plan preparation: Revision 03 production status, planning guidance, target base, committed forces, options, and conclusions.

The document is not dated, but appears to be from October 2002, shortly before the Secretary of Defense was briefed. Targeting intelligence and selection had been completed, warheads allocated to the strike plans, and strike (sortie) planning for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), Sea-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), and long-range bombers nearly completed. After a Joint Staff review and production of the final Revision Report 03 in January 2003, final Defense Secretary review and approval by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were scheduled for late January 2003 before OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 went into effect on March 1, 2003.

Declassification of the document took four years. It was released in response to a FOIA request submitted in October 2003 for documents pursuant to remarks made by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing in July 2002. When asked if there had been a review of the SIOP since the mid-1990s, Myers replied: “Yes, there absolutely has. In fact, the secretary and I spent considerable time revising the SIOP. I think we started that last year and have gotten another major review ongoing.” The declassified document was released on October 10, 2007.

Resources: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Guidance | The Matrix of Deterrence | The Post Cold War SIOP and Nuclear Warfare Planning: A Glossary, Abbreviations, and Acronyms

Acknowledgements: This research has been made possible by support from the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ploughshares Fund.

At an unusual press briefing on Monday, U.S. military officials provided the first physical evidence of Iranian arms shipments to Iraqi extremist groups. The display, which the New York Times called “extraordinary,” consisted of explosively formed penetrators, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile reportedly found in Iraq and bearing Iranian markings. Notably, the officials also claimed to have proof that the operation was being directed by “the highest levels of the Iranian government,” a claim that was rigorously denied by Tehran.

The briefing raised more questions than it answered. Topping the list are questions about the extent of the Iranian government’s involvement in the arms shipments. Defense Department officials reportedly provided little proof for their claims of high-level involvement by the Iranian government, and the next day General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chief of staff, appeared to contradict them. Commenting on the captured weaponry, Pace conceded that the weapons “[do] not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.” Yesterday President Bush sided with General Pace, confirming that “we don’t…know whether the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.”

The captured weapons themselves are also puzzling. Not only were they reportedly manufactured in Iran, they are also emblazoned with manufacture dates and lot numbers – hardly indicative of a government that wants to maintain “plausible deniability.” Architects of covert aid programs usually go to great lengths to conceal their government’s involvement by purchasing weapons from foreign suppliers and clandestinely shipping them through third countries. The Iranians apparently did neither. Why?
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With the war against Islamist fighters drawing to a close, Somalia’s transitional government and its foreign allies now face several Herculean tasks: bringing to heel the warlords and militias that have terrorized the country for fifteen years, winning over the various clans and sub-clans that dominate Somali politics, rebuilding the nation’s devastated infrastructure, etc, etc, etc.

In the interest of international security, I would add one more: recovering the dozens of shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles reportedly distributed to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), and sanctioning the suppliers.
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The latest report from the UN group that monitors the arms embargo on Somalia has caused quite a stir, generating extensive news coverage and eliciting vehement denials from governments accused of violating the embargo. But, as underscored by declassified US intelligence documents from the 1990s, such disregard for the embargo is nothing new.

The documents, which were obtained by the FAS under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal a disheartening similarity between sanctions-busting in the mid-1990’s and sanctions-busting now. From the countries involved to the weapons shipped, little appears to have changed over the last decade.
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