How to move 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of Iran

0:00Here is one big question that the United States and Iran are trying to negotiate. What happens to the uranium? Iran's cache of highly enriched uranium would be the key ingredient in developing a potential nuclear weapon.

0:12Scott Roecker:The USA will get all nuclear dust. You know what the nuclear dust is? President Trump has been referring to this material as nuclear dust. Last Friday, the president talked about the issue at a Turning Point USA event in Arizona. And somebody said, how are we going to get the nuclear dust? We're going to get it by going in with Iran, with lots of excavators. Trump has consistently said that one of the main objectives of this war is to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. Though, in a social media post on Monday, President Trump wrote that obtaining this uranium would be a, quote, long and difficult process.

0:47Consider this. How would the United States remove highly enriched uranium from Iran?

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1:49It's Consider This from NPR. The U.S. estimates Iran possesses nearly 1 ,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium. It's not quite enriched to the level needed for an atomic weapon, but it's not far off. The U.S. would like to convince Iran to give up this cash, which raises the question, how would that even work? We called someone who has experience with this sort of disarmament. Scott Roker is vice president of the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He previously served in the National Nuclear Security Administration. Scott, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me on.

2:23Have you ever done this kind of work without the full cooperation of a government that's ready to disarm? Yeah, the United States has a lot of experience of removing HEU highly enriched uranium. In fact, we've removed all of the HEU from more than 30 different countries around the globe. But in every instance, we had full agreement with each of those governments. So how does this normally happen? Like you said, the U.S. has done this a lot of times, always with a country on board. let's assume that some sort of agreement is reached in these talks. Iran does agree to allow the U.S. or a third party to remove the uranium.

3:01What would happen next? Yeah, so actually what would happen, in my opinion, with Iran would be different than how we've done it in the past. Usually when we've done these kinds of missions, we've had agreement with countries, we've had a lot of lead time to characterize the material, understand exactly what it is, potentially convert it into a new form that's suitable for shipping, and then packaging it up and getting it out. In this situation, we're kind of pressed for time, right? You want to do this as quickly and as safely as possible. So there are actually mobile capabilities that the U.S.

3:36government has that they could deploy to Iran, get it there within 30 days, and basically set up their own lab to be able to take care of the material and get it removed. I just want to better understand what exactly we're talking about here. President Trump keeps talking about uranium as nuclear dust. What are we physically talking about? Are we talking about dust? Are we talking about rods of uranium? Like what physically is at stake here? Yeah, it's been reported that the material is actually in a gas form inside cylinders that look similar to scuba tanks. And so, yeah, I'm not sure what the dust means.

4:10And how do you safely transport that? You mentioned casks before. Like how is this packaged and shipped? Yeah, generally what you do is you would characterize the material so you knew exactly what type of material it was, what was the form, what was the condition it's in. That's a question I have, especially in this situation. My first issue would be making sure that we can account accurately for all of the nuclear material. And it's important to note here that we'd want the International Atomic Energy Agency right there with us to have a second set of eyes to confirm what we're seeing. And then based on that information, you would develop a plan to potentially convert it to a new form.

4:50Generally speaking, it's safer to ship material when it's in an oxide or a powder, so a more stable form. And then you would package it up into approved casks that you can put into an airplane and fly out. And then where does it go? That would be up to the negotiators. You know, in this scenario, it could potentially be flown to the United States and put in one of its national labs for safekeeping. And ideally downblended to a lone rich geranium so it couldn't be used in a nuclear weapon. How long would something like this take? Again, assuming that there's an agreement and things move relatively smoothly and agreeably from that point forward.

5:31Yeah, this is a mission that would take weeks, not days. And it really depends on how quickly all the material could be brought to a single site. and, again, what kind of condition the material is in. What else to you as an expert in this field that most of us know nothing about, what else to you is being kind of mischaracterized or oversimplified as this gets talked about by politicians, by reporters right now? Yeah, for me what really stands out is, again, the location of where the material is. We know there's 440 kilograms or close to 1 ,000 pounds. We know a majority of that is likely in Isfahan.

6:08But then where's the rest of it? Is it in Natanz? Is it in Fordow? Is it in some location nobody knows about? So I feel like that's a major hurdle that is often not discussed. And then the condition of the material. What has happened to this material during all these military activities? They're not very well protected as far as I understand in these cylinders. And so there's a lot of unknowns around the condition of what that material looks like. Well, Scott Roker of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, thank you so much for talking to us. Thanks for having me. This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Karen Zamora.

6:46It was edited by Patrick Jaron Wadanana. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

6:56It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Every story from shortwave NPR science podcast starts with a question. Like, why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? At NPR, we are here for your right to be curious about the world around you. Follow Shortwave wherever you get your podcasts, because the more you ask, the more interesting the world gets.