Saturday, August 26, 2006

Producing Electricity & Producing Bombs Different

Ali Akbar Dareini's description of the role of heavy water in relation to uranium enrichment in his Washington Post article is a little confusing. Dareini states that a heavy water production facility will be used to help development a nuclear bomb. Although he does point out the difference between a light water reactor and a heavy water reactor he goes on to say the heavy water reactor would, "allow the reactor to run on natural uranium mined by Iran, forgoing the enrichment progress." This contradicts the need for uranium enrichment. If Iran can run a heavy water reactor without having to enrich the uranium, then they do not need to enrich uranium. This would seem to be fine with Israel and the West?

Moreover, if Iran has a uranium enrichment facility, it does not matter whether light water or heavy water is used in its nuclear power reactor. An enrichment facility alone can be used to enrich uranium or plutonium above the 90% purity level needed to produce a nuclear bomb. We mention this because we do not want the American public to get confused about the huge difference between nuclear bomb production and electricity production. They are two completely differenet types of facilities, operations and products.

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