Most are run by universities and use low-enriched uranium rather than highly enriched uranium.
The plan envisages Iran's low-enriched uranium being shipped overseas for processing into fuel.
We are continuing research on the feasibility of converting research reactors in the United States and Russia to low-enriched uranium fuel.
So far Iran has produced only a small amount of low-enriched uranium, but this could eventually be converted to the bomb-making sort.
Our object is to get a sizable amount of low-enriched uranium out of the country of Iran, making the world more secure.
It also says that Iran has boosted its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) by 500kg to more than 1, 300kg in the last six months.
Iran announced that it had managed to produce low-enriched uranium from its first 164-machine cascade of centrifuges at its pilot enrichment plant at Natanz.
Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium is bigger: only about half of it would be needed to produce the equivalent fuel load for the medical reactor.
The draft plan would require Iran to send about 1, 200kg (2, 600lb), or 70%, of its low-enriched uranium to Russia by the year's end for processing.
When Hecker was shown a 2, 000-centrifuge plant in November 2010, he could not tell if it was operating at all, let alone producing low-enriched uranium for fuel purposes, as claimed.
To add to their suspicions, some traces of low-enriched uranium found in Iran have yet to be explained, and may indicate more enrichment work than has been owned up to.
The HEU Agreements provide for the conversion of approximately 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium contained in Russian nuclear weapons into low-enriched uranium for use as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors.
WHITEHOUSE: Executive Order--Russian Highly Enriched Uranium
The underground plant at Natanz, filled mostly with early models of IR-1 centrifuges and monitored by the IAEA, has already produced enough low-enriched uranium which, if diverted, could make several nuclear bombs.
Within a couple of months of your inauguration Iran could have enough low-enriched uranium for one bomb, once the stuff has been boosted (this could take less than another two months) to weapons-grade.
The United States and other leading nations have been negotiating with Iran to send low-enriched uranium abroad to be turned into material for use in medical research and treatment at a reactor in Tehran.
Or it could be used secretly with more sophisticated machines quickly to turn Iran's legal stockpile of low-enriched uranium into high-enriched uranium for weapons, for example if Iran were to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, an IAEA official who asked not to be named cautioned against drawing such dramatic conclusions from the data, saying Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium would have to be turned into highly enriched uranium to be weapons-grade material.
CNN: Rice: U.S. will seek to end any 'illicit' nuclear ambitions by Iran
The idea was for Iran to ship 1, 200kg of its low-enriched uranium overseas to produce fuel for a research reactor, thus leaving the country for a while with too small a stockpile with which to make a bomb.
However, an IAEA official who asked not to be named cautioned against drawing such dramatic conclusions from the data, saying Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium would have to be turned into highly enriched uranium to qualify as weapons-grade material.
CNN: U.S.: Iran has material for nuclear bomb but still 'not close'
Unless it suspends this and other nuclear work, as the UN Security Council has repeatedly demanded, any deal to ship some of its already accumulated low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing will look less of a breakthrough than first hoped.
He worked closely with the White House in the final months of his tenure at the IAEA to try to forge an agreement with Iran that would have seen Tehran ship out the majority of its low-enriched uranium to a third country.
By shipping two-thirds of its then low-enriched uranium abroad, Iran would have been left, for perhaps six months while it rebuilt stocks, with less uranium in the country than would be needed, with further enrichment, for a breakout to a nuclear bomb.
The other is an agreement on a proposal to take Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) and send it to Russia and France for conversion into fuel rods for use in Iran's small research reactor in Tehran, which produces isotopes for cancer treatment.
Mr. Hecker, the Stanford physicist, estimated that the centrifuges he saw on his Nov. 12 visit to North Korea's Yongybyon nuclear complex could produce around two tons of low-enriched uranium per year, or around 88 pounds of highly enriched uranium, nearly enough for a single atomic weapon.
WSJ: North Korea Nuclear Find Raises Fears It Will Share With Iran
If enacted in its current form, Section 621 of this year's Energy bill , by contrast, would allow foreign companies to receive U.S. HEU for use in medical isotope production without having to move toward a low-enriched uranium (LEU) target, even if it is technically feasible for them to do so.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Kyl and Schumer move to monitor uranium exports
The most obvious attempt was when we gave them an offer that said we are going to provide the conversion of some of the low-enriched uranium that they already have into the isotopes that they need for their medical research and for hospitals that would serve up to a million Iranian citizens.
Iran would find it much harder to get foreign uranium for its enrichment machines, which Mr Ahmadinejad claims he set spinning merely to produce under 5% low-enriched uranium for nuclear-power reactors (though Iran has none that can use it), while others suspect it may eventually be used to make the 90%-enriched stuff needed for a bomb.
While the proposal that was outlined on Monday would be a step in the right direction because of the amount of low-enriched uranium that would be transferred -- again, assuming that the Iranians kept up their end of the deal, which has not -- has almost never been the case -- we have had eight months of progression.
At the same IAEA Board of Governors meeting this week, the agency reported that Iran has produced more than a thousand kilograms of low enriched uranium - enough to build a bomb after further enrichment.
The Islamic Republic turned down a deal put together last year by America, Russia, France and the IAEA that would have bought time for talks by taking much of Iran's low-enriched (3.5%) uranium out of the country, returning it later as higher-enriched (about 20%) rods to provide new fuel for a small Tehran-based research reactor.
应用推荐