Iranian Dissidents Point to Covert Nuclear Site

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today - Friday, April 8, 2011:

Dissident Group Says Iran Factory Really a Nuke Site - Joby Warrick for The Washington Post [link]

• An Iranian opposition group claimed Thursday to have discovered the location of a secret factory that manufactures high-tech equipment for Iran’s nuclear program, a facility the group says is disguised as a tool-making plant.
• The National Council of Resistance of Iran said the alleged plant makes centrifuge parts for Iran’s uranium enrichment program and is closely tied to Iran’s Defense Ministry. The dissident group also claimed that Iran already has made components for 100,000 centrifuge machines, far more than is needed to supply the country’s known uranium facilities.
• “This is a clear indication that there are other secret sites out there, either undergoing construction or perhaps already completed,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, a consultant and former spokesman for the NCRI, told reporters after unveiling satellite photos of the site 80 miles west of Tehran.
• U.N. nuclear officials have long known that Iran is operating factories for centrifuge parts, but Iranian officials have never allowed visits by U.N. inspectors or even revealed the location of the facilities. Centrifuges are fast-spinning machines used to make enriched uranium, a key ingredient in both nuclear reactor fuel and nuclear weapons.
• Other than labeled satellite photos, the dissidents offered no evidence to back their claims. The NCRI and its operational wing — the Mujaheddin-e Khalq — have revealed the existence of other secret Iranian nuclear sites in the past, and the group was the first to publicly disclose the existence of Iran’s underground uranium enrichment site at Natanz.
  

U.S. Gears for High-Stakes Missile Defense Test - Jim Wolf for Reuters [link]

• The United States is preparing for its first test of a sea-based defense against longer-range missiles of a type that officials say could soon threaten Europe from Iran.
• Much is riding on the event, including confidence in the Obama administration's tight timeline for defending European allies and deployed U.S. forces against the perceived Iranian threat.The last two intercept tests of a separate U.S. ground-based missile defense, aimed at protecting U.S. soil, have failed.
• The planned sea-based test this month will pit Lockheed Martin Co's Aegis shipboard combat system and a Raytheon Co missile interceptor against their first intermediate-range ballistic missile target, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
• The layered, multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile effort also focuses on North Korea's growing arsenal of missiles, which, like Iran's, could perhaps be tipped with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.  The "window" for the Aegis shootdown attempt runs to April 30, Lehner said. He said the Aegis-equipped ship used in the test will be in the south central Pacific and the ballistic missile target will be launched from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific.
• The United States expects to meet its goal of putting an initial missile defense capability in Europe by the end of this year even though efforts to find a host nation for a powerful Raytheon-built radar station are still under way, Brad Roberts, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, told the House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces on March 31.

Don't Compromise America's Nuclear Security - Richard Klass for The Huffington Post [link]

• There is another war, with no pictures, being fought in some of the more unstable countries in the world. It is the war our government wages to secure and dispose of loose nuclear weapons -- before terrorists can get them.
• The threat is real. Highly enriched uranium is stored in loosely guarded warehouses and sold on the black markets of countries like the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. These dangerous materials are not adequately protected and are at a high risk of falling into the hands of the wrong people. In one frightening instance, a lone security guard was found guarding nuclear material stored in a locker protected by a simple padlock.
• Fortunately, the nuclear non-proliferation programs of a government agency called the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have proven to be highly effective in the fight to secure and remove these nuclear materials before they can be seized by terrorists. Since April 2009, NNSA has overseen the removal highly enriched uranium in six countries amounting to a total of 120 bombs-worth of nuclear material. 
• But now Congress, led by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Janesville, is making unexplainable, reckless cuts to this vital national security program. Congress' current Continuing Resolution contains a $551 million cut championed by Ryan to NNSA's defense nuclear non-proliferation budget that could undermine that work and threaten Americans' safety.
• Fortunately, a bipartisan group of Congressman, led by Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) penned a letter to Rep. Ryan urging him to restore the funding. Ryan should listen to his colleagues...There isn't a price tag on keeping Americans safe. Rep. Ryan has a responsibility to balance the budget without compromising America's nuclear security.

Ivanov Says Russia Wants ‘Red-Button’ Rights on U.S. Missile-Defense Plan - Simone Baribeau and Henry Meyer for Bloomberg [link]

• Russia wants to join in the planned U.S. missile shield in Europe with “red-button” rights to launch strikes at incoming weapons, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
• Russia, which is pursuing talks on the issue with the U.S., will only accept an agreement that allows it to have a joint role in operating the defense system, Ivanov said in an interview yesterday in Miami, two days after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
• “We insist on only one thing: that we’re an equal part of it,” said Ivanov, a former KGB colleague of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and defense minister until 2007. “In practical terms, that means our office will sit, for example, in Brussels and agrees on a red-button push to start an anti-missile, regardless of whether it starts from Poland, Russia or the U.K.”
• Russian leaders complain that the shield, which the U.S. says is needed to guard against so-called rogue states such as Iran, will blunt their country’s nuclear capability. They have warned of a new arms race within the next decade unless they can cooperate with the U.S. and its allies on missile defense.

U.S. Health-care System Unprepared for Major Nuclear Emergency, Officials Say - Sheri Fink for The Washington Post [link]

• U.S. officials say the nation’s health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite years of focus on the possibility of a terrorist “dirty bomb” or an improvised nuclear device attack.
• A blunt assessment circulating among American officials says, “Current capabilities can only handle a few radiation injuries at any one time.” That assessment, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 and stamped “for official use only,’’ says “there is no strategy for notifying the public in real time of recommendations on shelter or evacuation priorities.”
• The Homeland Security report, plus several other reports and interviews with almost two dozen experts inside and outside the government, reveal other gaps that might increase the risks posed by a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.
• Although hospitals near nuclear power plants often drill for radiological emergencies, few hospitals outside of that area practice such drills. Most medical personnel are untrained and unfamiliar with the level of risk posed by radiation, whether it is released from a nuclear power plant, a “dirty” bomb laced with radioactive material or the explosion of an improvised nuclear weapon.