SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Here is one big question that the United States and Iran are trying to negotiate - what happens to the uranium? Highly enriched uranium would be the key ingredient in building a potential nuclear weapon. The U.S. estimates Iran possesses nearly 1,000 pounds of it, enriched not quite to weapons grade, but close. So it is a big U.S. priority to remove this uranium from Iran. Though, assuming Iran agrees to surrender it, how would that even work? Well, we called somebody who has experience with this sort of disarmament. Scott Roecker is vice president of the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the Nuclear Threat Institute, and he previously served in the National Nuclear Security Administration. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SCOTT ROECKER: Thanks for having me, Scott.
DETROW: Have you ever done this kind of work without the full cooperation of the government that's ready to disarm?
ROECKER: Yeah. The United States has a lot of experience of removing HEU - highly enriched uranium. In fact, we've removed more than - 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.
DETROW: 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. What would happen next?
ROECKER: 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. government 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.
DETROW: I just want to better understand what exactly we're talking about here. President Trump keeps talking about this 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?
ROECKER: 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.
DETROW: And how do you safely transport that? You mentioned casks before. Like, how is this packaged and shipped?
ROECKER: Yeah. Generally, what you do is you would characterize the material so you knew exactly, you know, 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, you know, have a second set of eyes to confirm what we're seeing. And then, based on that information, you would develop a plan to, you know, potentially convert it to a new form. Generally 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, you know, approved casks that, you know, you can put into an airplane and fly out.
DETROW: And then where does it go?
ROECKER: 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 down-blended to a low-enriched uranium so it couldn't be used in a nuclear weapon.
DETROW: 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?
ROECKER: Yeah. 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.
DETROW: 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?
ROECKER: Yeah. For me, what really stands out is, again, the location of where the material is, right? We know there's 440 kilograms, or close to a thousand pounds. We know a majority of that is likely in Isfahan, but then where's the rest of it? Is it in Natanz? Is it in Fordo? 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.
DETROW: Well, Scott Roecker of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, thank you so much for talking to us.
ROECKER: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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