Nuclear Deal Silent on Iran’s Parchin Military Plant, Bushehr
(Worthy News) – The Iranian nuclear deal reached in Vienna contains no reference to the Parchin military facility where most of Iran’s past nuclear arms-related work was carried out, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Parchin is a large military complex located about 19 miles southeast of the Iranian capital of Tehran.
It is run by the Defense Industries Organization of Iran, and includes hundreds of buildings and test sites used for the development of weapons, including rockets and fuel, and high explosives, including plastic explosives.
Details of nuclear weapons work carried out by the Iranians at Parchin were revealed in IAEA reports since 2011. A November 2011 report said non-nuclear high-explosive tests were conducted at a Parchin facility that simulated the blast used to create a nuclear detonation.
The agency report said there had been “strong indicators of possible weapon development.” The suspicious activity included “modeling of spherical geometries, consisting of components of the core of a [high enriched uranium] nuclear device subjected to shock compression, for their neutronic behavior at high density, and a determination of the subsequent nuclear explosive yield.” [ …read more ]
Bushehr Reactor Could Provide Plutonium for Nukes
Additionally, the draft agreement made public on Tuesday contains no stated limits on Iran’s Russian-made Bushehr nuclear power facility that analysts say could produce plutonium for dozens of bombs.
On the nuclear power-generating Bushehr reactor, Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said that leaving it out of the accord was a mistake.
“That reactor can produce enough plutonium for dozens of bombs per year,” he said. “Iran could remove the fuel from the reactor and use a small, cheap reprocessing plant to extract plutonium, and get its first bombs in a matter of weeks.” [ Source ]