The clock marking the time it may take Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to pose a credible military nuclear threat is ticking more slowly than was once assumed. That's the consensus of experts in the non-government arms control community, according to a briefing today by Ivan Oelrich [2] and Ivanka Barzashka of the Federation of American Scientists [3], a Ploughshares Fund grantee. They concluded last fall that estimates of Iran's potential HEU production rate should be lowered dramatically. Although their assessment drew skepticism at first, after a vigorous debate [4], others now appear to have accepted the idea that Iran's potential production rate of HEU (processed to yield 20% U-235) is only one-half to one-fifth as high as earlier estimates.
Links
[1] https://ploughshares.org/file/1552
[2] http://www.ploughshares.org/expert/64
[3] http://www.fas.org
[4] http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2628/consensus-emerges-on-irans-ir-1
[5] http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/02/recalculating-irans-pace-of-uran.html