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Expert Says Seizing Iran’s Enriched Uranium Would Take Thousands of U.S. Troops

The warning points to a large cache of 60% uranium stored in deep tunnels at Isfahan.

Image
Andy Weber at the Ulba plant, fall 1994, with one of the drums used to haul away the highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the United States. Project Sapphire, an American operation to remove more than a half-ton of weapons-grade uranium removed from Kazakhstan in 1994. From Oct. 14 to Nov. 11, 1994, a team of 31 Americans ventured into a remote area of Kazakhstan to secure 1,320 pounds of weapons-grade uranium and airlift it safely out of the country to the United States. On November 20-21, two U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy airlifters carried 448 containers of the dangerous material and the team to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, with several aerial refuelings. The uranium was then trucked to the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee to be blended down.

Overview

  • The 60 Minutes interview Sunday featured nuclear security veteran Andrew Weber, who said a U.S. operation to grab Iran’s stockpile would require thousands of troops to secure the site.
  • Weber said the uranium is buried in tunnel networks so deep that even powerful bunker-busting bombs may not reach it.
  • Former White House adviser Matthew Bunn said strikes last year reduced Iran’s capacity but did not erase a program that still holds fuel for multiple bombs.
  • Bunn estimated nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% could be further refined into material for about 10 to 11 nuclear weapons.
  • Weber contrasted Iran with a 1994 removal in Kazakhstan that took about 30 people and six weeks, saying Iran’s fortified, inland site would be far harder to access and secure.