ISIS Iran Reports
The following reports address specific issues in Iran's nuclear programs, whether imagery analysis of ongoing work at a nuclear site such as Natanz, our assessment of the latest IAEA report on Iran’s implementation of its safeguards obligations, or a summary of where the various U.S. Presidential candidates stand on the issues.
Archive: August 2009
August 28, 2009: ISIS Analysis of August 2009 IAEA Iran Report, by David Albright, Paul Brannan and Jacqueline Shire,
Centrifuges increase; Rate of LEU production steady; progress on inspection requests at Arak and Natanz; no progress on possible military dimensions.
ISIS has released its analysis of the August 2009 IAEA Safeguards Report on Iran’s nuclear program.
August 25, 2009: Update on the Arak Heavy Water Reactor in Iran ,
On August 11, 2009, ISIS released a report on Iran’s IR-40 heavy water reactor at Arak, which is currently under construction. The report raised several questions regarding the reactor’s planned fuel and the status of its construction. Since the release of that report, ISIS has received additional information on these issues, shedding more light on the origin of the Arak reactor fuel rod bundle depicted in President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the Fuel Manufacturing Plant at Esfahan.
August 11, 2009: Mysteries Deepen Over Status of Arak Reactor Project, by David Albright, Paul Brannan and Robert Kelley,
Iran’s IR-40, or Arak, heavy water reactor, which has been under construction since June 2004, has not received as much attention as its gas centrifuge program and its operation and potential to produce significant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium are years away, although this timeline is narrowing.
In addition to increasing questions about the status of the reactor’s construction and associated hot cells that could be capable of separating plutonium, there are also numerous questions about the 40 megawatt-thermal heavy water reactor’s fuel assembly that was recently presented by President Ahmadinejad at the Esfahan Fuel Manufacturing Plant.