Reply #5: Ploughshares: most likely being built to support a nuclear weapons program

[bananas]

Ploughshares experts weigh in on Iran's nuclear facility
Posted on Sep 28 2009 8:29 am
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In an article in the Washington Independent, leading nuclear weapons analysts -- all Ploughshares Fund grantees and president Joe Cirincione -- agreed that the previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Qom is most likely being built to support a nuclear weapons program, but they argue that it is not only the size of the site that leads to that conclusion. Last Friday, President Obama dramatically revealed the existence of the site, with the leaders of Britain and France at his side. Ivanka Barzashka, a nuclear analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, says that “the size of a facility does not determine whether it can or cannot produce weapons-grade, or highly-enriched, uranium." The issue for Barzashka is that the facility makes no economic sense as a nuclear power generator. In a view echoed by Cirincione and James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Barashka says that building a 3,000-centrifuge facility to enrich uranium for nuclear power would most likely take about 90 years to get one year's fuel load. "But if you want for a bomb," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)," then 3,000 is plenty. Two thousand would be enough."

(photo: satellite image of suspected site obtained and analyzed by ISIS)
Read the full article: http://washingtonindependent.com/61063/experts-weigh-in-on-significance-of-irans-nuclear-facility