Word: reactors
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...close to nuclear weapons capability, Obama gave his engagement effort only until the new year to change the game. With that deadline fast approaching, Iran's pushback against a deal that would require it to ship out most of its current enriched-uranium stockpile for conversion abroad into harmless reactor fuel has prompted many in Washington to score Obama's outreach effort a failure. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of positive response from the Iranians," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week. (Watch a video...
...Western powers' goal of ensuring that Iran does not produce nuclear weapons, they don't support the position taken by the U.S. and its closest allies that Iran should forfeit the right to enrich uranium on its own soil even for peaceful purposes. Enrichment, under international supervision, to create reactor fuel is a right guaranteed to signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Brazil and other would-be nuclear-energy producers view attempts to limit the peaceful nuclear ambitions of a developing nation as an unfair attempt by the established nuclear powers to keep the new boys down...
...comes as the Administration weighs the next move in its diplomatic effort to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran. Tehran has effectively rebuffed a confidence-building deal that would ship out the bulk of Iran's enriched-uranium stockpile to be converted into fuel rods for a medical-research reactor - which would also have added about a year to the time frame within which Iran could weaponize nuclear material. The deal would have offered more time for longer-term diplomatic negotiations. As a result, President Obama has begun trying to rally international support for a new round of sanctions...
...nuclear diplomacy is wearing thin. "Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal," Obama said Thursday in Seoul, referring to a deal under which Iran would export the bulk of its stock of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into reactor fuel. "And so, as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences...
Moscow is, however, using its own leverage to press Tehran to be more accommodating. Last Monday, its energy minister Sergei Shmatko announced that the nuclear reactor being built by Russia at Bushehr won't go online by its December 2009 deadline. (The reactor was first scheduled to begin producing electricity in the year 2000, and has been delayed five times since then.) Moscow has further annoyed Tehran by stalling on the delivery of the sophisticated S-300 air defense system ordered by Iran, whose deployment would make life difficult for any air force to attack the Islamic Republic. (See pictures...