Non-Subscriber Extract
Iran spins towards industrial nuclear capacity
29-May-07
If Iran has mastered the indigenous production and running of centrifuges, it has reached a level of technical understanding of the enrichment process that Western countries consider the point of no return. If, on the other hand, it has merely exploited imported components without assembling the infrastructure necessary to produce additional centrifuges then it might be possible to push back their development programme. The negotiating strategy the West adopts will depend on the answers to these questions.
Iran's post-revolution programme to develop uranium enrichment centrifuges started in 1985 with procurement activities operating out of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) headquarters in Tehran. These efforts proved successful when, two years later, Pakistani scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan's network sold a complete set of drawings and manufacturing reports of the P-1 centrifuge together with a limited number of components. Based on a Urenco design, the P-1 is composed of an aluminium rotor with four segments connected by aluminium bellows. Iran has also worked on developing centrifuges using the more advanced P-2 design, but these are not believed to have progressed far enough to influence its industrial-scale enrichment programme. The difficulties Iran has encountered implementing these design features has strongly influenced the speed at which it has acquired this technology.