Bonn 2020 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 7: Verification and Safeguards

AGA 7.3: Talk

Friday, April 3, 2020, 12:10–12:35, H-HS XVII

Uranium Enrichment, Centrifuges and the Current Situation in Iran — •Matthias Englert — Öko-Institut e.V. Rheinstr. 95, 64295 Darmstadt

Today highly enriched uranium (HEU) is produced with gas centrifuge technology, a technology which is in the reach of the technical capabilities of most countries worldwide. Problematic developments in nuclear proliferation in the last two decades involved the spread and covert acquisition of centrifuge enrichment capabilities by countries such as Iran. After the discovery of the Iranian nuclear program it was mostly frozen since the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) in 2015. Due to recent tensions and after the withdrawal from the US in 2018, Iran already restarted certain nuclear activities and announced to increase it's activities if European parties (UK, France, Germany) would leave the deal. This talk will give a summary of Iran's fissile material production capabilities based on estimates in the open literature and own calculations. Estimating the separative capacity of gas-centrifuges based on accessible information it is possible to calculate a hypothetical production rate for Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). The resulting hypothetical production rates depend heavily on the assumption about the enrichment and depletion level, the cascade scheme, on the amount of raw material available and the timescale.