On July 14, 2015 the so-called P 5 + 1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) concluded a historic deal with Iran over its nuclear program. The present paper argues that the Iranian nuclear program and the international controversy over it are derivatives of both the experimental model of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its behaviour, in which it acts as an empire.
Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, making it one of the
most dangerous materials in existence. As a result, governments take extraordinary measures to
secure HEU against theft or diversion and to reduce the inventories of HEU in the world.
To that end, it is important to track how much civil HEU exists and where it is. However,
national civil HEU stocks are difficult to estimate, with transparency policies varying by country
and few countries providing official declarations of their stocks. As a result, this report contains
the few official civil HEU declarations and estimates civil HEU stocks in countries that do not
provide public declarations. This study relies on open source information to derive these
estimates. It is an update of a report published in 2005.
India has one of the largest nuclear power programs among developing nations. Utilizing plutonium
produced in these power reactors and discharged in irradiated or spent fuel, India has developed a
relatively large civil plutonium separation program and an associated fast breeder reactor program
that is using that separated plutonium.
India has a sizeable nuclear weapons effort. The weapons use separated plutonium produced
primarily in a set of small, dedicated reactors and a smaller amount produced in nuclear power
reactors. It has a growing gas centrifuge program able to produce significant amounts of highly
enriched uranium (HEU) mostly for naval reactor fuel and perhaps for nuclear weapons, including
thermonuclear weapons.
India is not transparent about its fissile material stocks. This report estimates India’s stocks of
separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, Uranium, and Plutonium
Israel developed its first nuclear weapon shortly before the 1967 Six Day War, making it the sixth nation to develop nuclear weapons.2 To this day, Israel maintains an ambiguous posture about its nuclear weapons, despite the declassification of formerly secret U.S. government documents which assert the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons. In addition, the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 revealed a larger nuclear weapons program than commonly assessed at that time.3
The heart of Israel’s nuclear weapons production complex is the Dimona site near the city of Beersheva. This site contains a number of secret nuclear facilities for the production of plutonium, including a heavy water reactor, a fuel fabrication plant, and a plutonium separation plant, all provided by France in the 1950s and early 1960s. The site also reportedly contains facilities likely involved in tritium extraction and purification (using tritium also produced in the reactor), lithium production, and possibly facilities dedicated to uranium enrichment, at least on a research and development scale.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Nuclear Power
The P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have finalized a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran that will verifiably block Iran's pathways to nuclear weapons development--the uranium-enrichment route and the plutonium-separation route--and guard against a clandestine weapons program. We assess that the final agreement will be a net-plus for nonproliferation and will enhance U.S. and regional security.
This two-page Iran Nuclear Policy Brief examines the key provisions and benefits of a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Nuclear Power, and Uranium