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Drawing may provide insight into iran's nuclear intentions by wwy yrj
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Drawing may provide insight into iran's nuclear intentions by WWY YRJ
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| Article Posted: 11/14/2012 |
| Article Views: 185 |
| Articles Written: 1412 - MORE ARTICLES FROM THIS AUTHOR |
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Drawing may provide insight into iran's nuclear intentions |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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VIENNA – A drawing based on information from inside an Iranian militarysite shows an explosives containment chamber of the type needed fornuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran hasconducted there. Iran denies such testing and has neither confirmednor denied the existence of such a chamber. The computer-generated drawing was provided to The AssociatedPress by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear programwho said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusalto acknowledge it. That official said the image is based on information from aperson who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site,adding that going into detail would endanger the life of thatinformant.
The official comes from an IAEA member country that isseverely critical of Iran's assertions that its nuclear activitiesare peaceful and asserts they are a springboard for making atomicarms. A former senior IAEA official said he believes the drawing isaccurate. Olli Heinonen, until last year the U.N. nuclear agency'sdeputy director general in charge of the Iran file, said it was"very similar" to a photo he recently saw that he believes to bethe pressure chamber the IAEA suspects is at Parchin. He said even the colors of the computer-generated drawing matchedthat of the photo he had but declined to go into the origins of thephoto to protect his source.
After months of being rebuffed, IAEA and Iranian officials meetstarting Monday in Vienna, and the IAEA will renew its attempt togain access to the chamber, allegedly hidden in a building. Anyevidence that Iran is hiding such an explosives containment tank,and details on how it functions, is significant for IAEAinvestigations. Beyond IAEA hopes of progress, that two-day meeting is beingclosely watched by six powers trying to persuade Iran to makenuclear concessions aimed at reducing fears that it may want todevelop atomic arms as a mood-setter for May 23 talks between thesix and Tehran in Baghdad. Warnings by Israel that it may attack Iran's nuclear facilitieseased after Iran and the six - the United States, Russia, China,Britain, France and Germany - met last month and agreed there wasenough common will for the Baghdad round.
But with the Jewish statesaying it is determined to stop Iran before it develops thecapacity to build nuclear weapons, failure at the Iraq talks couldturn such threats into reality. In Tehran on Sunday, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator,said it was up to the Western nations coming to the Baghdad talksto "build trust of the Iranian nation," adding, "Any kind ofmiscalculation by the West will block success of the talks." The IAEA has been stonewalled by Iran for more than four years inattempts to probe what it says is intelligence from member statesstrongly suggesting that Iran secretly worked on developing nuclearweapons. It first mentioned the suspected existence of the chamber in aNovember report that described "a large explosives containmentvessel" for experiments on triggering a nuclear explosion, addingthat it had satellite images "consistent with this information." It did not detail what the images showed. But a senior diplomatfamiliar with the IAEA's investigation who has also seen the imageprovided to the AP said they revealed a cylinder similar to theimage at Parchin. Subsequent photos showed a roof and walls goingup around the cylinder that then hid the chamber from satellitesurveillance.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in March that his agency has"credible information that indicates that Iran engaged inactivities relevant to the development of nuclear explosivedevices" at the site. Diplomats subsequently told the AP that theexperiments also appear to have involved a small prototype neutrondevice used to spark a nuclear explosion - equipment that would betested only if a country was trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran has strenuously denied conducting such work - and anyintentions to build nuclear weapons - but has been less clear onwhether the structure where it allegedly took place exists. The senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA investigations saidthe Iranians have refused to comment "one way or the other" on thatissue to agency experts.
He and others interviewed by the APdemanded anonymity because their information was privileged, andthe official providing the drawing and other details on thestructure also demanded that he and his country not be identifiedin return for sharing classified intelligence. Attempts to get Iranian comment were unsuccessful. A copy of thediagram was attached to an email sent to Ali Asghar Soltanieh,Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, with a note that the AP would beasking for reaction. Subsequent phone calls over the weekend wentto his voice mail. The technology used for the suspected multipoint explosivestrigger experiments is similar to that employed in manufacturingtiny industrialized diamonds, and the IAEA believes former Sovietscientist Vyacheslav Danilenko - an expert in such diamond-making -helped Iran with designing the chamber.
Diplomats say Danilenko has told the agency that he did not workon such a chamber, but his son in law, identified by the diplomatsas Vladimir Padalko, told the IAEA that the container was builtunder Danilenko's direct supervision. Repeated attempts by the APand other media organizations to contact the two men have beenunsuccessful since the IAEA revealed Danilenko's suspectedinvolvement in November. "What one does inside such a chamber is conduct high explosivestesting," said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferationand Disarmament Program of the International Institute forStrategic Studies. "You are going to make something go boom withmaybe 70 kilograms (more than 150 pounds) of high explosives, youneed to contain the explosion. "And particularly if you are using uranium, which is reportedlythe case, you want to contain all the uranium dust so there's notany tell-tale, observable signals of that experimentation." The official who provided the drawing also shared the followinginformation on the chamber: ORIGINS -Built in the early 2000s by Azar AB Industries Co.
in the cityof Arak and then transported to Parchin. Both the senior diplomatfamiliar with the IAEA investigations and Heinonen, the formersenior IAEA official, confirmed this. Company officials did notanswer calls seeking comment. SIZE -Volume: 300 cubic meters, or about 10,600 feet. Diameter: 4.6meters, or 15.09 feet.
Length: 18. 8 meters, or 61.68 feet. Thesenior diplomat confirmed the measurements. EQUIPPED WITH -A vacuum pump used to remove air from the chamber to minimizepressure that could damage the structure during an explosion; acompressor that shoots water into the chamber after testing toflood and clean it; a septic tank that receives the waste; anelevation system to suspend the explosives in the upper part of thechamber during testing; and a neutron detection system outside theexplosion chamber to measure neutron emissions.
The senior diplomatsaid these features would make sense, or such testing, but couldnot verify they existed, suggesting they may have been added afterthe Iranians put up the superstructure shielding the chamber fromsatellite surveillance. TIME FRAME -The official said the chamber was used for detonationexperiments in 2003, 2005 and 2006. Two officials familiar with theinvestigations said the first date appeared to be valid but theyhad no information of subsequent experiments. The United Statesbelieves Iran stopped working on a concerted nuclear weaponsprogram at various sites after 2003, while the IAEA suspects Tehranis continuing some work but in a much less organized way thanbefore 2003. THE SCIENTISTS -Seyed Ashgar Hashemi-Tabar, described as "an expert in measuringdetonation phenomena" and not previously identified.
Acting oninformation from the same official, the AP previously named otherscientists allegedly involved as Fereydoun Abbasi, the current headof Iran's nuclear agency, who escaped an assassination attempt in2010; Darious Rezainejad, who was killed by a car bomb last year;and Reza Ibrahimi. Inspecting the site at Parchin, southeast of the capital, Tehran,was a key request made by senior IAEA teams that visited Tehran inJanuary and February. Iran rebuffed those demands and subsequentones - the most recent within the last two weeks - as well asattempts by the nuclear agency to question Iranian officials andsecure other information linked to the allegations of secretweapons work. At the same time, the IAEA has voiced alarm at unexplained"activity" at the site - a term diplomats familiar with theagency's concerns say stands for attempts to clean up any evidenceof the kinds of experiments the agency suspects were carried out. A second senior diplomat familiar with the investigation recentlytold the AP that spy satellite images shared with the agency showwhat seems to be water streaming from the building housing thechamber.
He said it also depicts workers removing bags of materialfrom that building and put on vehicles outside. A third senior diplomat said that the apparent cleanup wascontinuing in early May, the last time he had seen the images. Iran has scoffed at suggestions of a cleanup in general and oftesting a neutron device in particular, with Foreign Ministryspokesman Ramin Mahmanparast asserting that nuclear contaminationcannot be washed away. But experts challenge that assertion. A cleanup "could involve grinding down the surfaces inside thebuilding, collecting the dust and then washing the areathoroughly," said David Albright, whose Institute for Science andInternational Security in Washington looks for signs of nuclearproliferation.
"This could be followed with new building materialsand paint. "It could also involve removing any dirt around the buildingthought to contain contaminants," Albright said in a statementemailed to selected recipients. "These types of activities could beeffective in defeating environmental sampling." Fitzpatrick, the other nuclear nonproliferation expert, also saida cleanup could be effective. "In the past, the IAEA has been able to catch out Iran by goingto a building that Iran tried to clean and they still found tracesof uranium," he said. "And Iran learned from that and they learnedthat `boy you have to scrub everything really clean; get down intothe drains and grind away any possible residue."'. I am a professional writer from Printing & Publishing, which contains a great deal of information about ice castles movie , masters of defense, welcome to visit!
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