February 15, 2019
Nearly all of Iran’s new and most advanced IR8 centrifuges for enriching uranium are failing, according to David Albright, the head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspector, presents a picture of an Iranian nuclear program not nearly so threatening as many say—which is ironic since he is generally viewed as a hawk on Iran.
There has been a range of debate about Iran’s nuclear program and loopholes in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that could allow the Islamic Republic to advance toward a bomb without violating the agreement.
One of the hottest issues has been that the deal allows Iran to continue working on advanced centrifuges.
The IR-8 is Iran’s newest and most advanced centrifuge. It was unveiled last year by Ali-Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), who said it could produce enriched uranium 16 times faster than the IR-1 centrifuges Tehran has been using thus far in its nuclear program.
Salehi said Iran has been injecting uranium hexafluoride into test IR-8s for three years and still needs to do some more perfecting work, but is now capable of mass-producing the IR-8 whenever the leadership orders it. The JCPOA allows Iran to work on advanced centrifuges, but not to mass produce them.
“The IR-8 has been a failure,” Albright said. “The centrifuge uses carbon fiber bellows, which involve carbon fiber tubes connected by a movable part, the bellows. They go into the shape of a banana when they hit a certain speed. You need to make them bendable. The bellows must be flexible, but they are made of carbon fiber so there are lots of problems with them cracking,” he said.
If the IR-8s worked properly, they could spin at a much faster rate and enrich uranium more rapidly. But Salehi said they don’t work properly.
Even with Iran’s older IR-1s, a 1960s design, inspectors have found that 20 percent to 30 percent regularly fail. Despite this failure rate, Albright said Iran works hard to make a public show that it is succeeding.
Albright, however, remains concerned that Tehran is plotting to obtain a nuclear bomb. He said Iran has had success with its IR-2m centrifuge, which is three to four times more productive than the IR-1 model.
But he said Iran’s technology is very expensive and Iran cannot enrich uranium anywhere nearly as cheaply as what it can buy from Russia for civilian nuclear uses, so Iran’s desire to enrich on its own “makes no sense at all” for anything other than a nuclear weapons program.
