Short answer: Dunno.

Since that answer wouldn’t have cut it with Miles (Pomper, ACT editor), I wrote a bit more for the most recent issue of ACT.

The Cascades

This is obvious, but one “European diplomat” told me that Iran has not demonstrated that it can run its centrifuges for an extended period of time. The 8 cascades in the commercial Natanz facility are not linked together, another such diplomat told me. [The IAEA DG Mohamed ElBaradei’s last report implies this, but doesn’t say so explicitly. I wrote about the report here and here. ]

We know that the Iranians missed their target date of installing 3,000 centrifuges by the end of May, but they may yet complete the task in short order. Unless they don’t.

I wrote that

a diplomatic source in Vienna close to the IAEA told Arms Control Today April May 25 that Iran is able to build one 164-centrifuge cascade every 10 days. At that rate, Iran will be able to install approximately 3,000 centrifuges by the end of June, the source said.

More recently, ElBaradei told reporters that Iran “could have just under 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges running in series by the end of July,” AP reported.

[ Jeffrey has a good post up about this subject, which includes a link to the audio file of ElBaradei’s remarks. Also, check out this post from Andreas Persbo. He has two pretty cool tables illustrating Iran’s possible future progress in installing centrifuges. ]

Incidentally, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said in April that Tehran will take up to 4 years to install all 50,000+ centrifuges in the facility.

So How Good Are Those Centrifuges?

Some of us have wondered about Iran’s ability to make centrifuges of sufficient quality and quantity. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of clarity on this subject either. I wrote that

[A] Vienna diplomat said that Tehran can produce enough centrifuge components for its projected enrichment needs. But a knowledgeable source told Arms Control Today that Iran may not be “fully independent” in making such components.

Asked about the quality of Iran’s centrifuges, the Vienna source added that Iran “can make functional machines.” Separately, a European diplomat said that it is not clear that Iran can do so, explaining that “quite a high number” of centrifuges have crashed at rates “higher than one would expect.”

The UF6

There have also been questions about the quality of Iran’s UF6.

That’s still the case. I wrote that:

Whether Iran’s uranium hexafluoride is of sufficient purity is unclear. The Vienna diplomat said that Iran is using its own feedstock, noting that the material is “good enough” to produce enriched uranium. But the two other European diplomats told Arms Control Today that Iran is probably using uranium hexafluoride obtained from China more than a decade ago.

Helpful, I know.

One interesting sidenote: I also found out that, according to “one diplomat,” Iran is currently attempting to convert its own uranium oxide into UF6. The process, however, “has not been perfected,” the diplomat said. Iran had previously been converting uranium oxide acquired from South Africa, he added.

Anyway, it’s Friday. Go home.