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Iran says it can produce higher enriched uranium if U.S. exits nuclear deal

FILE PHOTO: Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi attends the lecture "Iran after the agreement: Hopes & Concerns" in Vienna, Austria, September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has the technical capability to enrich uranium to a higher level than it could before a multinational nuclear deal was reached to curb its nuclear program, state TV quoted the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy organization Ali Akbar Salehi as saying.Middle East, U.S. sanctions,

U.S. President Donald) Trump has given European signatories to the 2105 deal a May 12 deadline to “fix the terrible flaws” in the agreement, or he will refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief on Iran.

Salehi warned Trump against taking this course. “Iran is not bluffing … Technically, we are fully prepared to enrich uranium higher than we used to produce before the deal was reached… I hope Trump comes to his senses and stays in the deal.”

Under the deal, which led to the lifting of most international sanctions in 2016, Iran’s level of enrichment must remain around 3.6 percent.

Iran stopped producing 20 percent enriched uranium and gave up the majority of its stockpile as part of the agreement with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia.

Uranium refined to 20 percent fissile purity is well beyond the 5 percent normally required to fuel civilian nuclear power plants, though still well short of highly enriched, or 80-90 percent, purity needed for a nuclear bomb.

Tehran has ruled out any possibility of negotiating over the country’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 and its international role in the Middle East, as demanded by Trump.

Britain, France and Germany back the deal as the best way of stopping Tehran getting nuclear weapons, but have called on Iran to limit its regional influence and curb the missile program.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Toby Chopra and David Stamp)

New Jersey man sentenced for role in Russian uranium bribe scheme

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A New Jersey man was sentenced on Monday to a year and a day in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with his role in arranging bribes for the awarding of contracts with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Boris Rubizhevsky, 67, of Closter, New Jersey, was sentenced to prison along with three years of supervised release and a $26,500 fine by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang for the District of Maryland, the department said in a statement.

Rubizhevsky pleaded guilty to the money-laundering conspiracy charge in June 2015. He was accused of acting as an intermediary in connection with bribes to co-conspirator Vadim Mikerin, a former nuclear official of Russia’s state-run enterprise Rosatom, the statement said.

Mikerin, former president of a U.S.-based Rosatom subsidiary, pleaded guilty in 2015 to helping orchestrate more than $2 million in bribe payments through secret accounts in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland.

Between October 2011 and February 2013, Rubizhevsky and Mikerin agreed to conceal bribes paid from the United States to overseas bank accounts, including a payment to an account in Latvia, the statement said.

Mikerin was sentenced in December 2015 to 48 months in prison for his role in the money-laundering scheme.

Authorities have said those payments went to Russian nuclear energy officials in exchange for contracts to U.S. companies involved in the shipment of uranium from Russia. Attorneys for Rosatom have said Mikerin acted alone.

Mikerin oversaw the shipment of uranium from Russia for use in American power plants. Much of that material was drawn from decommissioned Russian weapons under an agreement with Washington known as the “Megatons to Megawatts” program, which converted the uranium from thousands of nuclear warheads for civilian use in U.S. nuclear power plants.

At one point, the arrangement fueled 10 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Daren Condrey, the former owner of Transport Logistics International, pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiring to make bribe payments to Mikerin in exchange for uranium shipping contracts. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a crime to bribe overseas officials to win business.

Mikerin’s arrest followed a seven-year investigation that began as a U.S. intelligence probe into Russian nuclear officials, according to court records and people familiar with the matter.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Additional reporting by Joel Schectman; Editing by Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker)

Iran says can produce highly enriched uranium in days if U.S. quits deal

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran can resume production of highly enriched uranium within five days if the nuclear deal it struck with world powers in 2015 is revoked, Iran’s atomic chief was quoted by state media as saying on Tuesday.

The deal that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani championed with the United States, Russia, China and three European powers led to the lifting of most sanctions against Tehran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

Rouhani has intensified efforts to protect the deal, also known by its acronym JCPOA, against Washington’s return to an aggressive Iran policy, after U.S. President Donald Trump approved new sanctions on Tehran.

Rouhani warned last week that Iran could abandon the nuclear agreement “within hours” if the United States imposes any more new sanctions.

“The president’s warning was not baseless,” Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi said on Tuesday.

“If we decide, we can reach 20 percent (uranium) enrichment within five days in Fordow (underground nuclear plant),” he added.

However, Salehi who was reappointed this month as vice president and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization, said his main priority would be to protect the JCPOA.

Following the nuclear deal, Iran drastically reduced the number of centrifuges – machines that enrich uranium – installed at Fordow, and kept just over 1,000 there for research purposes.

The JCPOA states that no enrichment is permitted at Fordow for 15 years.

Uranium enriched to a high level can be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on six Iranian firms in late July for their role in the development of a ballistic missile program after Tehran launched a rocket capable of putting a satellite into orbit.

Trump also signed in August a U.S. Senate bill that imposed sanctions on Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

Iran says new U.S. sanctions breach the JCPOA but the United States says they were unrelated to the deal.

During his election campaign Trump called the deal a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated”. This month he said he did not believe Iran was living up to the deal’s spirit.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

North Korea ramps up uranium enrichment, enough for six nuclear bombs a year: experts

By Jack Kim and James Pearson

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea will have enough material for about 20 nuclear bombs by the end of this year, with ramped-up uranium enrichment facilities and an existing stockpile of plutonium, according to new assessments by weapons experts.

The North has evaded a decade of U.N. sanctions to develop the uranium enrichment process, enabling it to run an effectively self-sufficient nuclear program that is capable of producing around six nuclear bombs a year, they said.

The true nuclear capability of the isolated and secretive state is impossible to verify. But after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test last week and, according to South Korea, was preparing for another, it appears to have no shortage of material to test with.

North Korea has an abundance of uranium reserves and has been working covertly for well over a decade on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level, the experts say.

That project, believed to have been expanded significantly, is likely the source of up to 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of highly enriched uranium a year, said Siegfried Hecker, a leading expert on the North’s nuclear program.

That quantity is enough for roughly six nuclear bombs, Hecker, who toured the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2010, wrote in a report on the 38 North website of Johns Hopkins University in Washington published on Monday.

Added to an estimated 32- to 54 kilogram plutonium stockpile, the North will have sufficient fissile material for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016, Hecker said.

North Korea said its latest test proved it was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, but its claims to be able to miniaturize a nuclear device have never been independently verified. [nL3N1BL1ND]

Assessments of the North’s plutonium stockpile are generally consistent and believed to be accurate because experts and governments can estimate plutonium production levels from telltale signs of reactor operation in satellite imagery.

South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo this year estimated the North’s plutonium stockpile at about 40 kilograms.

But Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons have been designed, has called North Korea’s uranium enrichment program “their new nuclear wildcard,” because Western experts do not know how advanced it is.

PAKISTAN CONNECTION

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said North Korea had an unconstrained source of fissile material, both plutonium from the Yongbyon reactor and highly-enriched uranium from at least one and probably two sites.

“The primary constraint on its program is gone,” Lewis said. Weapons-grade plutonium has to be extracted from spent fuel taken out of reactors and then reprocessed, and therefore would be limited in quantity. A uranium enrichment program greatly boosts production of material for weapons.

The known history of the uranium enrichment project dates to 2003, when the North was confronted by the United States with evidence of a clandestine program to build a facility to enrich uranium with the help of Pakistan.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in his memoirs that A.Q. Khan, the father of that country’s nuclear program, transferred two dozen centrifuges to the North and some technical expertise around 1999.

“It was also clear that the suspected Pakistani connection had taken place, as the centrifuge design resembled Pakistan’s P-2 centrifuge,” Hecker said in a report in May.

Hecker reported being shown around a two-story building in the Yongbyon complex in November 2010 that a North Korean engineer said contained 2,000 centrifuges and a control room Hecker called “astonishingly modern.”

By 2009, the North had likely acquired the technology to be able to expand the uranium project indigenously, Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review, has said.

North Korea has not explicitly admitted to operating the centrifuges to produce weapons-enriched uranium, instead claiming they were intended to generate fuel for a light water reactor it was going to build.

Despite sanctions, by now North Korea is probably largely self-sufficient in operating its nuclear program, although it may still struggle to produce some material and items, Lewis said.

“While we saw this work in Iran, over time countries can adjust to sanctions,” he said.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

North Korea says it has resumed plutonium production: Kyodo

TOKYO (Reuters) – North Korea says it has resumed plutonium production by reprocessing spent fuel rods and has no plans to stop nuclear tests as long as perceived U.S. threats remain, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday.

North Korea’s Atomic Energy Institute, which has jurisdiction over its main Yongbyon nuclear facilities, also told Kyodo it had been producing highly enriched uranium necessary for nuclear arms and power “as scheduled”.

“We have reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods removed from a graphite-moderated reactor,” the institute told Kyodo in a written interview.

The institute did not mention the amount of plutonium or enriched uranium it had produced, Kyodo said.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in June North Korea appeared to have reopened the Yongbyon plant to produce plutonium from spent fuel of a reactor central to its atomic weapons drive.

North Korea vowed in 2013 to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main reactor at its Yongbyon site that had been shut down.

North Korea had said in September that Yongbyon was operating and that it was working to improve the “quality and quantity” of its nuclear weapons.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January.

According to Kyodo, the North Korean institute said it had already succeeded in making “lighter and diversifying” nuclear weapons, and that it had no intention of halting nuclear tests.

“Under conditions that the United States constantly threatens us with nuclear weapons, we will not discontinue nuclear tests,” the institute was quoted by Kyodo as saying.

North Korea will also build a 100,000-kilowatt light-water nuclear reactor for experimental use, the institute was quoted as saying, but it did not provide further details.

Little is known about the quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that North Korea possesses, or its ability to produce either, though plutonium from spent fuel at Yongbyon is widely believed to have been used in its nuclear bombs.

North Korea has come under tightening international pressure over its nuclear weapons program, including tougher U.N. sanctions adopted in March backed by its lone major ally China.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Exclusive: Possible early North Korean nuclear site found – report

A missile carried by a military vehicle in North Korea

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. policy institute said it may have located a secret facility used by North Korea in the early stages of building its program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which if confirmed would be critical to the success of any future nuclear deal, according to a report seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The report by the Institute for Science and International Security said there has always been doubt about whether North Korea has disclosed all of its nuclear facilities. Confirming their location would be critical to the success of any future agreement to freeze and dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, it said.

The site, 27 miles (43 km) from the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, may have played a key role in development of centrifuges that refine uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched and highly enriched uranium, the report said.

“It is necessary to identify where North Korea enriches uranium and part of that is understanding where it has done it in the past,” said David Albright, the institute’s president.

What may once have been the early centrifuge research and development facility is believed to have been inside an aircraft part factory inside a mountain next to Panghyon Air Base. It was located using commercial satellite imagery, the report said.

It was unclear whether the aircraft part factory was still operational but information from defectors indicates there may be three production-scale centrifuge manufacturing plants operating in the country although their locations have not been confirmed, said Albright.

Tensions have been escalating between North Korea and South Korea, the United States and Japan over Pyongyang’s fourth underground nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches.

North Korea’s nuclear program is based on highly enriched uranium and plutonium separated from spent reactor fuel rods.

The reclusive government, which for more than a decade denied having a gas centrifuge program, in November 2010 revealed the existence of a production-scale gas centrifuge plant at Yongbyon but insisted it had no other such facilities.

In June 2000 a Japanese newspaper quoted Chinese sources as saying a facility was located inside Mount Chonma, the report said. Information recently obtained from “knowledgeable government officials” suggested the undeclared facility was associated with an underground aircraft parts factory, it said.

Working with Allsource Analysis, which interprets satellite imagery, the institute determined it most likely was Panghyon Aircraft Plant, which made parts for Soviet-supplied fighters.

The report quoted an unidentified official as saying the site could have held between 200 and 300 centrifuges.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and James Dalgleish)

Five Georgian citizens suspected of selling uranium

TBILISI (Reuters) – The security service in the former Soviet republic of Georgia said on Thursday it had detained five Georgian citizens who were trying to sell $3 million worth of radioactive uranium.

Security service officers did not say whether the group had a buyer for the uranium, nor where the group had acquired it.

World leaders have been concerned about the security of Soviet nuclear weapons since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991. Concern has also grown that radical groups are seeking material with which to make a ‘dirty bomb’.

“The detainees were planning to sell nuclear material with total weights of 1 kilogram and 665 grams, which contained two radioactive isotopes – Uranium-238 and a small amount, 0.23 percent, of Uranium-235,” security service investigator Savle Motiashvili told a briefing.

Motiashvili added that given the gamma ray emission, direct and long-term exposure to the substances was dangerous for life and health.

A Tbilisi city court put the group into pre-trial custody. They face five to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

Georgia’s security service has foiled several attempts to sell uranium or other radioactive materials.

Earlier this month, they detained six Georgian and Armenian citizens who were trying to sell $200 million worth of the uranium-238 isotope.

In 2006, a resident of Russia’s North Ossetia region was arrested for trying to sell weapons-grade uranium for $1 million to agents he thought were radical Islamists. He was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison.

(Reporting by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Toby Chopra)

Study Finds Uranium Seeps into Two Major U.S. Aquifers

Researchers have found that about 2 million Americans in the Great Plains and central California are living close to sites that far exceed federal safety guidelines for uranium levels.

A recent study conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found uranium levels in the High Plains and Central Valley aquifers, two of the country’s most significant sources of drinking water and irrigation, are far above thresholds set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The research showed that water in the High Plains aquifer, the largest in the United States, had uranium levels as high as 89 times the EPA-established standards. The water in California’s Central Valley aquifer, a source of irrigation for one of the country’s most important agricultural hubs, showed some uranium levels that were 180 times the guidelines set forth by the EPA.

Uranium is an element whose isotopes were famously used in the production of atomic bombs. Past studies have shown long-term exposure to water tainted by uranium can lead to high blood pressure and kidney damage, according to a news release accompanying the Nebraska study.

The researchers found the uranium contamination in most of the 275,000 water samples they collected was directly tied to nitrate, a more common water polluter that is found in chemical fertilizers and animal waste. The scientists say that nitrate interacts with the uranium that’s naturally present in the ground in a way that makes the material dissolve in groundwater.

About 78 percent of the contaminated sites had nitrates present, the study indicated. The researchers said the data indicated that the uranium levels weren’t predominantly the result of mining or any kind of nuclear fuel, but rather the reactions between nitrate and the element.

“It needs to be recognized that uranium is a widespread contaminant,” one of the Nebraska study’s researchers, Karrie Weber, said in a statement accompanying the research. “And we are creating this problem by producing a primary contaminant that leads to a secondary one.”

The researchers said that facilities to treat water can cost seven figures, which makes it hard for some smaller municipalities to buy them. And there are some people who receive their water from private wells and don’t tap into any kind of regulated municipal water system.

The Associated Press reported Monday that the uranium contamination has been so widely underreported that some people living in the affected areas didn’t even know it was an issue.

The news agency said it conducted its own tests on the private wells of five homes near Modesto, California, where officials spent $500,000 on upgrades to its water system that were designed to bring down uranium levels. The report indicated none of the homeowners knew uranium even had the potential to be a water pollutant, yet two of the five wells showed dangerous levels of it.

The High Plains aquifer supplies drinking and irrigation water to eight states from South Dakota to Texas, according to the Nebraska study. The Central Valley aquifer is a major water source for California and the state’s vital agriculture industry, which the state Department of Food and Agriculture said produces half of America’s domestically-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. In all, the department said California growers and ranchers got $54 billion for last year’s products.

“When you start thinking about how much water is drawn from these aquifers, it’s substantial relative to anywhere else in the world,” Weber said in a statement. “These two aquifers are economically important — they play a significant role in feeding the nation — but they’re also important for health. What’s the point of having water if you can’t drink it or use it for irrigation?”

Iran Begins Deactivating Centrifuges But Still Shouting “Death to America”

Iran has begun the process of deactivating and decommissioning the first of thousands of centrifuges. The centrifuges are used for enriching uranium and this action is in response to Iran’s part of it’s commitment according to the nuclear deal reached with U.S. and other major world powers.

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Kyodo News agency, during a visit to Japan, that the entire process will “take some time.”

“We have already started to take our measures vis-a-vis the removal of the centrifuge machines — the extra centrifuge machines,” Ali Akbar Salehi told Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, according to the Reuters news agency.

Iran needs to take most of its centrifuges, spread over two facilities, out of service, reducing their numbers from 19,000 to around 6,000. Also under the agreement Iran has promised to reduce its enrichment capabilities.

According to Reuters, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated his approval of the nuclear deal, allowing the work to begin, but the lawmakers said that the pace at which the centrifuges are being decommissioned is in direct violation of the Ayatollah’s directives.

On Tuesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke to Iranian students in Tehran about mistrust for U.S. policies and the nuclear deal and said that the slogan “Death to America,” was directed at the U.S. government and not its people.

“Your ‘Death to America’ slogan, and the cries by the Iranian nation, have strong logical support behind them,” he told the students, “Obviously by ‘Death to America’, we don’t mean death to the American people. The American nation is just like the rest of the nations. It … means death to U.S. policies and its arrogance.”

St. Louis Landfill Fire Gets Closer to Radioactive Waste

An underground fire at Bridgeton Landfill, located about 20 miles from downtown St. Louis, has been smoldering since 2010 with radioactive waste buried less than 1000 yards away at West Lake Landfill. The West Lake Landfill was designated as an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site in 1990, but the federal government is still deciding how to clean up the waste.

Missouri Attorney General Koster released reports last month that showed radioactive waste has contaminated trees and groundwater outside the perimeter of the landfill, where World War II-era uranium byproducts were dumped illegally in the 1970s.

“It’s no longer just underneath the landfill itself. It has migrated through the air and groundwater and we have expert testimony that we’re going to present that shows that,” he said.

Koster is speaking of the on going lawsuit against the owner of the Bridgeton and West Lake Landfills, Republic Services, to force them to clean up the locations. Koster filed a lawsuit against the company in 2013, claiming negligent management and violation of state environmental laws, the Associated Press reported. The case is scheduled to go to trial in March 2016.

In a recently revealed St. Louis County emergency response plan it was noted that there is potential for radioactive fallout with no warning. At least 4 area school districts sent letters to parents on Monday explaining their plans to evacuate or shelter students and close off air intakes to limit exposure should the fire reach the radioactive dumping area.

Superintendent of the Pattonville School District wrote, “We remain frustrated by the situation at the landfill. This impacts not only our community, but the entire St. Louis region.”

Analysts with Republic Services show the company’s gas wells aimed at keeping the smoldering heat from reaching the radioactive waste have been successful. The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees West Lake Landfill as a toxic Superfund site, has also made repeated assurances that it is safe and in an AP report has accused the Missouri Attorney General of causing “public angst and confusion.”

Landfill spokesman Russ Knocke told KMOX St. Louis, “Bridgeton Landfill, whose management team works closely with the region’s first responder community, is safe and intensively monitored.”

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