IRAN CLOSE TO WEAPONS GRADE URANIUM

Ambassador John Bolton wrote this letter to the Financial Times today. Once again the great one points out the obvious and just how dangerous the obvious has become. And the world circle jerks.

Iran is now close to weapons-grade enriched uranium By John R Bolton

From Mr John R. Bolton

Sir, Your report, “Iran moves ahead with nuclear programme” (May 24) contained the following sentence: “Iran has also declared that it has enriched uranium to a level of 4.8 per cent - enough to serve as nuclear fuel, but far short of the levels of about 90 per cent needed for atomic weapons.”

The plain implication of the sentence is that Iran has a long way to go before it creates the highly enriched uranium (HEU) it needs for weapons purposes - all the way from roughly 5 per cent (low enriched uranium or LEU) to HEU’s 90 per cent.

This implication is false. Enriching a given quantity of natural uranium by centrifuges to LEU levels of the U235 isotope in fact consumes approximately 70 per cent of the work and time required to reach HEU concentrations of the isotope. Thus, Iran is not “far short” of HEU levels; it is more than two-thirds of the way there for each kilogram of uranium feedstock it enriches. Your readers should not be misled on this point.

John R. Bolton,

American Enterprise Institute,

Washington, DC 20036, US

UPDATE: He just gets better and better hat tip EJO