Russia Helping Iran Accelerate Nuke Program - Scientists Establish 2 Laser Sites For Enrichment Work

Reza Kahili * WND

Iranian scientists – with Russian help – have set up two sites to use laser technology to enrich uranium for the regime’s nuclear bomb program, according to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit.

The Russians had argued that due to IAEA monitoring and Western countries’ lurking satellites, it would be wise to use lasers to enrich uranium as, the source added, it is 16 times more productive, requires less space and energy, and is much easier to hide.

In 2010, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran possessed laser enrichment technology, but the regime refused to respond to demands by the International Atomic Energy Agency to explain its laser program.

The IAEA in a visit to a laboratory in Lashka Abad, Iran, in 2003 had noticed work on laser isotope separation but could not determine the full extent of Iran’s research and development with laser enrichment technology.

Hans Ruhle, the German nuclear weapons expert, in a commentary published in the daily Die Welt last May, argued that Iran can enrich uranium using laser technology, which would be more difficult to detect. He also stated that American spy agencies in 2000 discovered a pilot program for laser enrichment between Iran and the Russian D.V.-Efremov Institute in St. Petersburg.

The laser technology SILEX (separation of isotopes by laser excitation) is used to separate uranium isotopes and refine fuel-grade uranium to weapons grade in fewer steps and, since it produces no distinctive chemical or thermal emissions, make nuclear proliferation easier.

“Laser enrichment technology provides the Iranian nuclear weapons program with a highly efficient means of producing weapons grade uranium (WGU) using a process that is relatively easily concealed and yet potentially can deliver more WGU faster than the now-public gas centrifuge enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow,” said Clare M. Lopez, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/russia-helping-iran-accelerate-nuke-program/#EBmYhHDwG6PFVzkr.99