Continuing the never-ending flurry of misleading allegations against Iran, a report of Iran producing equipment at Isfahan to produce uranium metal is now being presented as a proliferation threat, with the Wall Street Journal noting “uranium metal can be used to construct the core of a nuclear weapons.”
Uranium, by its very nature, is a metal, so that isn’t a particularly helpful statement from them. Any use of uranium outside of unrefined ore can be said to be uranium metal. The uranium used for nuclear weapons would need to be enriched to 90% or higher, while Iran isn’t attempting anything nearly so high. There are other uses for uranium that are not military.
Indeed, the whole need for this equipment was an attempt to produce improved fuel rods for the US-built Tehran Research Reactor. These rods use 20% enriched uranium, and produce medical isotopes.
That means there isn’t only a civilian explanation for Iran’s actions, but that is exactly what Iran is already being reported to be doing. Yet talk of a nuclear weapon is constantly brought up, irrationally so, just to keep fear of the program going.
The Wall Street Journal reporters are ignorant idiots…!
The enrichment process requires the uranium to be in a gaseous form. This is achieved through a process called conversion, where uranium oxide is converted to a different compound which is a gas at relatively low temperatures. Yellow cake solid uranium is reacted with fluorine to create uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas. Uranium, in the chemical form of UF6, is suitable for use in enrichment operations and is the desired product. The UF6 exits the process as a gas which is then cooled to a liquid and drained into 14-ton storage and transport cylinders. As the UF6 cools over the course of five days, it transitions from a liquid to a solid. Next comes the designing and assembling the other non-nuclear components in and around the fissile material core to make a device capable of forming the “physics package” of a warhead, suitable for use as part of a combat-ready weapons system. Then testing, detonating the nuclear device as proof of concept. Typically, multiple nuclear test explosions are necessary to perfect warhead designs, particularly smaller, lighter, more efficient designs. Then comes adapting the warhead for placement into a bomb or the nose cone of a delivery vehicle, and performing flight tests with an inert warhead to confirm the performance of the non-nuclear functions of the warhead, such as safing, arming, and fusing, which are necessary in order to achieve adequate levels of confidence and reliability.