April 11, 2006

Iran's Enrichment in Context

Iran is starting to reprocess its 110 tons of uranium hexafluoride (HF6). So assuming they're keeping everything metric, That translates into a potential of 782.1 kg of U235F6. With Flourine having an atomic weight of about 19 the molecule would have an atomic weight of 349, 114 or 32.67% of which is fluorine which means that after you get rid of the flourine, you're left with ~525kg of U235.

Depending on design you can make a nuclear bomb from as little as 15kg of uranium with the use of neutron reflectors to 56kg if you go for the simple bare sphere approach. This means that once the 110 tons of UF6 is processed fully, Iran will have sufficient U235 to make somewhere between 9 and 35 small nuclear weapons.

Pleasant dreams.

Posted by TMLutas at April 11, 2006 10:45 PM