Israel says Iran is close to a nuclear weapon. Others doubt

[Oscar]

Israel says Iran is close to a nuclear weapon. Others doubt it

[ https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-nucl ... -1.7565848 ]

U.S. intel, IAEA both suggest Iran isn't making a nuclear weapon, but worry remains over increasing enrichment

Chris Brown · CBC News · June 19, 2025

EXCERPT: "This time, Israel's fears over Iran's intention to build a nuclear bomb really may be valid. Or not. And for better or worse, it will be U.S. President Donald Trump making the decision about what facts to accept or to reject.

For most of his nearly 20 years leading Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been stoking international concerns that his country faces the threat of "nuclear annihilation" if Iran is able to build an atomic weapon.

As early as 1996, he proclaimed: "Time is running out." Sixteen years later, in 2012, Netanyahu stood before the UN with an almost cartoon-like drawing of a round bomb with a lit fuse, urging the international community to stop Iran's ayatollahs before it was too late. . . . ."

More:

[Oscar]

Comments on Iran and Enrichment in Iran:

Dr. Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility - June 21, 2025

[ http://www.ccnr.org/GE_Iran_and_Uranium ... t_2025.pdf ]

Friends and Colleagues:

There is a lot of confusion about the uranium enrchment facilities in Iran.

In natural uranium, only 7 atoms out of 1000 are chain-reacting uranium-235. The other 993 atoms are, for the most part, uranium-238 atoms – not a chain-recating material.

Uranium enrichment refers to any technology that increases the percentage of the chain-reacting U-235 beyond the 0.7% level. But there is a good deal of misinformation about enriched uranium in the media recently.

(1) Nuclear Explosions

It is often reported that 90% uranium enrichment is “needed” to have a nuclear weapon. This is not true. The Hiroshima bombs had only 80% enrichment. Iran has a good deal of 60% enriched uranium, and you can make a bomb from 60% enriched uranium -- it would be bulkier than a bomb with 90% enrichment and therefore harder to deliver, but not so very much harder.

Also, the mechanism needed for making a uranium bomb is very much easier than what is needed for a plutonium bomb. It can be done with a lot less effort and taking very little time. It’s called a “gun-type” atomic bomb rather than an “implosion-type” atomic bomb.

The gun-type bomb just fires one chunk of uranium into another chunk (the target) so that the two chunks add up to more than a “critical mass”. It is so simple it cannot possibly fail – as a result they never had to test this type of bomb before using it. They dropped it on the city of Hiroshima with no testing. There is a need for a precision timed “neutron source” but that is very old technology that has been well known for ages.

The implosion-type bomb is much more sophisticated, requiring a perfectly spherical shaped mass of plutonium metal surrounded by concentric plastic explosives to drive the sphere inward toward the centre - an “ implosion”. That is so tricky it’s pretty well got to be tested before using. The USA tested it at Alamagordo before dropping it on the city of Nagasaki.

Nuclear non-proliferation authorities maintain that a powerful nuclear explosive device (gun-type) could be made with any uranium enriched to 20% or more. Such an explosive device would not have to be delivered by rocket or aeroplane, but could be delivered in the hull of a ship, or in a truck, or even in the trunk of a car, and detonated by remote control.

Independent experts now say the same is true of most HALEU (high-assay low-enriched uranium) enriched to more than 12% U-235. Although this reality is not officially acknowledged by regulators, it means that the fuel for some of the “fast” or “advanced” SMNRs being proposed — like the ARC [NB] or eVinci [Sask] or Natrium [Wyoming] reactors -- is already weapons usable material, even though it is below the 20% enrichment level.

(2) Health and Environmental Dangers

Uranium is a radioactive heavy metal. All heavy metals are poisonous. Toxicologists regard the chemical toxicity of natural (unenriched) uranium to be equal to or greater than the radiotoxicity. Ingestion of uranium is particularly hazardous to the kidney - renotoxicity (chemical). Inhalation will expose the lungs to alpha radiation, causing fibrosis of the lungs and possibly cancer.

The more enriched the uranium, the more elevated is the radiotoxicity while the chemical toxicity remains basically unchanged. However, in the form of a metallic or an oxide dust or aerosol, the danger is long-term rather than short term. Death would not occur immediately but over time. Cancers would take up to 20 years or more to develop.

However, enrichment plants use uranium in a very toxic chemical form called uranium hexafluoride (“hex”) UF6. This is one of the only compounds of uranium that exists in a gaserous form at pretty low temperatures. You need to have a gas in order to separate the heavier uranium atoms from the lighter ones. Iran uses thousands of “ultracentrifuges” to do this. Spinning very fast, the heavier uranium atoms are thrown outwards while the iighter atoms stay closer to the centre, providing a very slight degree of enrichment. By repeating this procedure tens of thousands of times, you can achieve any degree of enrichment you want, but it is a slow process and cannot be hurried.

Now uranium hexafluoride is a very nasty substance. It reacts with moist air to form a corrosive acidic compound that is very harmful to living things exposed to it. So people close to the faciltiies, if those facilities were bombed, could be greatly harmed right away from the “hex". Here are some of the details about uranium hexafluoride from US government sources:

OSHA Hazards - Highly toxic by inhalation, Highly toxic by ingestion. Corrosive.

Target Organs - Kidney, Liver, Lungs, Brain, Skin, Eyes.

GHS Classification - Acute toxicity, Oral (Category 1)
Acute toxicity, Inhalation (Category 1)
Specific target organ toxicity - repeated exposure (Category 2) Skin Corrosion (Category 1A)
Serious eye damage (Category 1)
Acute aquatic toxicity (Category 2)

(3) Geopolitics

In the meantime, it is important to realize that there are NO treaties or binding agreements that make uranium enrichment illegal, to any degree of enrichment whatsoever. So, Iran has not violated any obligations laid down by the Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other international instrument. In fact, Iran does not have nuclear weapons, whereas Israel does. Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereas Israel has not. Iran has allowed many inspections of its nuclear facilities by IAEA inspectors whereas Israel has never done so.

Nevertheless, it is true that anyone (like Iran) with a stash of highly enriched uranium can choose to make bombs rather quickly at any time. In that sense the threat is very real, but there is no indication that Iran has crossed that line. Under the Obama administration, Iran agreed to the most restrictive conditions that any country in the world has ever agreed to – including not enriching uranium beyond 5%, which is DEFINITELY not usable for nuclear weapons. No other country has ever agreed such a restriction.

In the first Trump administration, it was Benjamin Netanyahu that bullied Trump into breaking that Obama-era agreement unilaterally — and he is now (by attacking Iran) making it as difficult as possible for anyone to negotiate a new agreement on the nuclear program in Iran. It seems clear that Netanyahu does not want Iran to enter into any such agreement. Israel’s actions seem designed to try to prevent such an agreement.

(4) The one good thing about this episode is that it impresses on people’s minds the dangers of allowing states to produce the explosive materials needed to make atomic bombs – namely, highly enriched uranium or plutonium. If the world is to ever achieve a nuclear weapons-free world, one of the preconditions would have to be prohibition or tight international control over all uranium enrichment plants and/or plutonium extraction facilities (i.e. reprocessing plants). Further, the use of weapons-usable uranium or plutonium-based fuels will have to be prohibited.

Dr. Gordon Edwards
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org