Recalculating Iran's pace of uranium enrichment

The clock marking the time it may take Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to pose a credible military nuclear threat is ticking more slowly than was once assumed. That's the consensus of experts in the non-government arms control community, according to a briefing today by Ivan Oelrich and Ivanka Barzashka of the Federation of American Scientists, a Ploughshares Fund grantee. They concluded last fall that estimates of Iran's potential HEU production rate should be lowered dramatically.  Although their assessment drew skepticism at first, after a vigorous debate, others now appear to have accepted the idea that Iran's potential production rate of HEU (processed to yield 20% U-235) is only one-half to one-fifth as high as earlier estimates.