Last April, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published a piece I wrote, “Missing from US-Iran talks: plutonium for more than 200 nuclear bombs.” Not long after, it published a critique by Sasan Karimi, a professor teaching at the Iranian-government and managed University of Tehran. His critique in turn prompted Greg Jones of Proliferation Matters to write a critique of the critique.
The Bulletin was kind enough to ask me to close out the debate with a brief comment attached below. As I note in my close-out comment, the possibility that Iran might extract plutonium from the spent-fuel ponds at its power reactor at Bushehr is real. Meanwhile, my proposals to reduce this risk—instituting IAEA near-real time surveillance and removing the spent fuel to a location outside of Iran—are modest.
As always, I’m curious to get your take.
Closing The Bulletin debate on Iran’s plutonium problem
The Bulletin is to be commended for running three separate features focused on whether, and how, Iran might build bombs from plutonium stored at its Bushehr nuclear power plant. The first is a piece I wrote, titled “Missing from US-Iran talks: plutonium for more than 200 nuclear bombs.” The second is a critique by Iranian scholar Sasan Karimi, titled “Beyond alarmism: A realistic assessment of Bushehr’s plutonium risk.” The third is a rejoinder by Greg Jones, titled “Why do we keep ignoring the large quantity of plutonium at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant?”.
Karimi’s critique, which is nearly twice the length of my original article, in a way, has flattered my piece. His analysis, however, fails to address seriously the supporting hyperlinked research my article contains. That, and his station at the University of Tehran, an Iranian government-funded and managed institution, suggests that the analysis I offered in my original article deserves a second read.
For example, Karimi argues near real-time IAEA surveillance is unnecessary. But it is something Iran accepted for its enrichment facilities at Natanz. It is difficult to understand why it wouldn’t be a good idea to apply it to the facilities at Bushehr.
Certainly, a question now worth asking is why Iranians, including Karimi, should object to this and the other modest recommendations I made in my piece, such as removing the spent fuel as the Russians offered to do when they struck the original contract to build Bushehr.
Hopefully, these and other related issues will be addressed in further US-Iranian negotiations. In any case, the Bulletin has done us all a service by spotlighting these matters.
To read the full piece, click here.