Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post has an article that (relying almost exclusively on anonymous administration sources) claims that Iran refused a US offer to "help" iran to purchase medical isotopes on the international market, insinuating the Iran's effort to manufacture its own medical isotopes is actually a cover for bomb-making, while also repeating the myth that Iran "first accepted" and "then rejected" the uranium swap offer made by the US.
The details of this US offer to help Iran purchase medical isotopes are not known, nor is the Iranian reaction to it. For example, did the Iranians reject it because it was made conditional on Iran giving up the right to make their own isotopes? Glenn Kessler doesn't say. But there are other issues in his coverage that need addressing:
First of all, Kessler repeatedly insinuates that there's something fishy about Iran's motives for making 20% enriched uraium to power a reactor used to manufacture medical isotopes, because other countries do not do so and Iran could simply import the isotopes "more efficiently." Well, what Kessler doesn't mention is that the countries which purchase rather than make their own isotopes simply haven't dedicated the expertise or resources to do so, unlike Iran which is one of the few "new entrants" into the field of uranium enrichment, along with Argentina and Brazil and perhaps more in the near future.
More significantly, in insinuating that Iran's plans to make medical isotopes is part of a weapons program, Kessler doesn't mention that Iran has been making its own isotopes for a long time now. Indeed, the reactor that the Iranians want to make 20% enriched fuel for (TRR or Tehran Research Reactor) and which is used to make the medical isotopes was built in 1967, during the Shah's time, with the assistance and cooperation of the US (the US also provided the initial batch of 93% weapons-grade, highly-enriched uranium fuel to operate it.) Iran's plans to make medical isotopes is thus simply a continuation of a long pre-existing capacity and not something new cooked up by Ahmadinejad as part of a secret plot to make nukes. In fact, the Iranians did not want to enrich uranium to 20% to power the reactor -- no, as Flint Leverett points out, they first offered to purchase the finished fuel for the reactor on the open market, as they have done in the past (they last purchased the fuel from Argentina in the 1980s, which also helped Iran convert the reactor to one that uses 19% enriched uranium rather than weapons-grade 93% enriched uranium.) The US swap deal offer was made after Iran attempted to acquire the finished fuel. So again, Kessler's insinuation that Iran's plans to make 20% enriched uranium to power the reactor is just a pretext to make bombs, falls apart.
Second, regarding the "more efficient" claim, as Juan Cole points out, Iran's announcement that it would make its own reactor fuel to make its own medical isotopes is quite logical, quoting Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation:
'Iran has developed plans to use naturally occurring uranium as a “target” for producing an important medical diagnostic isotope of molybdenum, an isotope whose decay product can be used to scan for cancers in bone, heart, lung, and kidney. Iran already imports a sizable quantity of this pharmacological radionuclide but producing it indigenously would not only save Iran a considerable amount of money each year, much more than it would pay for the fuel for the reactor it would use to produce it, but also allow a more efficient use of this short lived isotope by preventing the decay of nearly half of the amount bought before it even reached the patients. Perhaps the biggest incentive indigenous production of 99Mo in Iran would be the encouragement of its entire nuclear medicine infrastructure; an infrastructure that might right the imbalance of medical isotopes into this developing country relative to other nations." '
Though Juan Cole didn't quote it, Jeffrey Lewis also writes in the same article:
It costs Iran about a $1 million per annum to import its current needs for diagnostic 99Mo. About half of that is “wasted” in transit as the molybdenum decays, an amount that could be saved if the isotope was produced locally...The real benefit to Iran for completing this deal, however, will not be the savings of a few million dollars or even the savings of nearly half the imported diagnostic radioisotopes from unavoidable wastage due to decays during shipment. The real savings will be the foot up Iran gets in its health care from starting to develop its own nuclear medicine industry. The discrepancy between the use of diagnostic isotopes in Iran and the developed world can, and should, be dramatically reduced; as it should for the entire world.
Finally, regarding the myth that Iran "first accepted, then rejected" the uranium swap agreement: Iran explicity said that they agreed only "in principle" to the idea of the swap but have made suggestions to firm-up the guarantees that the US would actually meet its obligations under the deal by, for example, suggesting that uranium should be swapped in batches. The negotiations are continuing and so the offer has not been "rejected". Again, as Flint Leverette points out, the Iranians did not reject it, and the US is the one which has been intransigent by insisting on a "take it or leave it" approach... which as I have written before only proves that the US offer was probably yet another poison-pill MEANT to be not accepted by Iran in order to portray Iran as being hell-bent on making nukes... which is precisely what the Kessler article insinuates.
[UPDATE: a kind reader points out:
The US is not in a position to "help" Iran obtain the medical isotopes. Diplomatic conflicts aside, this is the worst time in history to obtain molybdenum-99, since the world's main suppliers -- the problem-ridden NRU reactor (Chalk River, Canada) and HFR reactor (Petten, Netherlands) -- are both shut down for major maintenance.
Those reactors were producing near 2/3 of the world supply of molybdenum-99 early last year. There is almost nothing the U.S. can do to help, since it has no domestic source of molybdenum-99.
]
Comments