Based on “highly reliable information,” Israel’s Intelligence Minister, Yuval Steinitz charged today that Iran used its Parchin military base to test detonators for nuclear weapons.
A statement from Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, issued a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani – the architect of Tehran’s diplomacy with the big powers – was to address the U.N. General Assembly, said internal neutron sources such as uranium were used in nuclear implosion tests at Parchin. …
“It is important to emphasize that these kinds of tests can have no ‘dual use’ explanation, since the only possible purpose of such internal neutron sources is to ignite the nuclear chain reaction in nuclear weapons,” the Israeli statement said.
Reuters cites a 2011 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report which “indicated that Iran may have conducted such alleged experiments but did not specify where they had taken place.”
Steinitz’ statement points to one of three possible experiments suggested by the IAEA. In a report on Parchin, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) described the tests that Iran was to have carried out at Parchin. One of the tests was:
A test of a uranium deuteride neutron initiator. Such an initiator, which is difficult to develop, must be adequately compressed by high explosives in order to produce a small burst of neutrons which initiate the chain reaction and the nuclear explosion. In a test that could have occurred in the explosive chamber, the initiator would be located at the center of a high explosive compression system involving a sphere of high explosives and possibly a non-nuclear surrogate material for the weapon-grade uranium core. The goal of the experiment is to compress the initiator, causing the fusion of the deuterium and a spurt of neutrons that could be measured by highly sensitive detectors located outside the chamber. This test would involve only a few grams of uranium and deuterium with variable amounts of explosives.
Iran is built a containment chamber at Parchin for testing the detonations.
Last week Steinitz warned that despite the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Iran remained the number-one threat to Israel.
In addition to the experiments Iran has carried out at Parchin, it has paved over much of the site, making detection of past experiments more challenging and thus making it more difficult for Iran to prove that it had nothing to hide. Iran has only allowed IAEA inspectors to Parchin once claiming that it is a military not a nuclear facility and has refused all access to the site ever since.
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