Excerpts from previous status reports, by subject
Removed on February 26, 2008
Russia delivers fresh fuel to Bushehr
After years of delay, the light water power reactor at Bushehr, which is being built by Russia for over $1 billion, is nearing completion. Delivery of the reactor’s fuel, which was meant to begin in March 2007, actually began in December 2007. The reasons given for this delay varied. At one point, Russian officials said that no fuel would be delivered until Iran suspended uranium enrichment. A spokeswoman for Atomstroiexport, the Russian state company in charge of Bushehr, blamed late payments by Iran and the burden of U.N. sanctions. But on November 26, 2007, IAEA inspectors began the process of certifying and sealing the uranium fuel produced for Bushehr at the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant in Siberia. By late January 2007, a total of about 82 tons of uranium fuel enriched to between 1.6 percent and 3.6 percent uranium-235 had been delivered to Bushehr in eight consignments; the fresh fuel assemblies were then verified and resealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Eighty-two tons of fuel is the amount needed to fuel the reactor at start-up. The fuel, once burned, will be returned to Russia in accordance with a protocol signed in February 2005.
U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran
Russia’s decision to begin fuel deliveries to Bushehr, after years of delay, may have been prompted by the release on December 3, 2007, of a declassified summary assessing Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities by U.S. intelligence agencies. This National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran concluded with “high confidence” that Iran halted its nuclear weapon program in the fall of 2003 for at least several years, and with “moderate confidence” that Tehran had not restarted this program by the middle of 2007. By nuclear weapon program, the NIE explained in a footnote, intelligence agencies meant only work on weaponization and clandestine uranium enrichment or conversion work. What the NIE called Iran’s “civilian enrichment program” at Natanz was not included in this category. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 have demanded that Iran cease enriching uranium at its site at Natanz.
The NIE also said that if Iran should decide to build nuclear weapons, the NIE assessed with “moderate confidence” that Tehran would be technically capable of doing so sometime between 2010 and 2015. The earliest possible date at which it might have enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb would be late 2009, though the NIE considered this “very unlikely.” The uranium fuel for this bomb would “probably” be made using centrifuges at covert facilities, which Iran has operated in the past, but which the NIE said “probably” were not restarted through at least mid-2007.