By Kary Love
I admit I am confused. Trump, not the US Congress, declared war on Iran to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by using its civilian nuclear reactor program to make a bomb.
Nuclear weapons are bad, arguably evil, so to many bombing Iran to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is good, or at least justifiable, despite innocent deaths of schoolgirls and many others. At the same time Trump has told Congress he is pursuing a “Civil Nuclear Deal” with Saudi Arabia but it is a deal that lacks standard guardrails that would prevent Saudi Arabia from using the technology to build a nuclear bomb.
Now this seems odd given that substantial evidence exists that Saudi Arabia was involved in the 9-11 attack on the US while Iran was not. Perhaps helping a country that may have helped those who attacked the US on 9-11 get a Nuclear Bomb is a bad idea? Apparently not as had been widely reported, “But according to Trump’s initial report to Congress, which was viewed by Reuters, the forthcoming (nuclear) agreement does not include non-proliferation safeguards that are intended to ensure Saudi Arabia does not develop nuclear weapons.”
The new agreement reportedly won’t include the “Gold Standard,” as it’s come to be known, which is a pledge not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel, which is the path to making nuclear bombs.
This seems odd, too, as Trump declared war on Iran precisely because Iran had a civilian nuclear program which gave Iran the technology to enrich uranium. The ability to enrich uranium is bad because natural uranium is not sufficiently radioactive to create the chain reaction which is needed for a civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity by using the heat from the chain reaction to drive turbines. So natural uranium has to be enriched to be used.
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying this the “dumbest way to boil water,” because of all the problems with nuclear reactors, such as radiation leaks, and nuclear waste that lasts forever and possible reactor meltdowns, to name a few. But even dumber is the fact that once you begin enriching uranium for reactor use, you have the knowledge of how to enrich uranium for bombs. It’s the same knowledge. The only difference is how much you enrich the uranium.
For a civilian nuclear reactor, you need to enrich natural uranium, which is mostly non-fissile U-238 and contains only 0.7%-3-5% of the fissile isotope U-235 to work in most civilian light-water nuclear reactors. Enrichment is simply separating the U-235 from the U-238 and once you know how to do it, you can up the amount of U-235 using methods similar to that to enrich to 3-5%. This process increases the concentration of the fissile isotope U-235 to sustain a controlled nuclear reaction.
This enrichment turns it from natural uranium into Low Enriched Uranium (LEU). If you continue enrichment you can obtain over 90% U-235 which can be used to make efficient nuclear bombs. While 90% is the standard, weapons can theoretically be constructed with uranium enriched to 60% or even 20% U-235 (called highly enriched uranium), though they would be less efficient and more difficult to design. Some call these “dirty bombs,” though there are truly no “clean” nuclear weapons, just degrees of dirty, mostly consisting of the dead people left behind.
The technical knowledge, centrifuge technology, and infrastructure used to enrich natural uranium to 3–5% (LEU for nuclear fuel) are the same, or fundamentally similar to, those needed to enrich to 90% (weapons-grade uranium). Mastering the initial stages makes achieving higher enrichment, such as 60% or 90%, technically feasible. This appears to be what Trump is working to give Saudi Arabia.
One might contend this will empower Saudi Arabia to make nuclear weapons in the future. Since Saudi Arabia arguably helped attack the USA in the past, one could be forgiven for suspecting this may be a really, really bad idea. Period.
But without the gold standard restrictions ordinarily attached to such agreements, it appears even worse. It seems as though Trump’s “Art of the Deal” here may give Saudi Arabia the nuclear bomb to be used for the next 9-11.
Many refuse to think about nuclear weapons because the math of “Oppenheimer” and nuclear science is too hard. Here we have a simple nuclear equation. But it is still hard to understand the equation: Iran Nuclear Bomb Bad, Saudia Arabia Nuclear Bomb Good. It does not add up.
Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters and many others in court for decades.
