Reconstruction of Arak Reactor: A Repeat of Bushehr Mistake?

Iran's insistence on maintaining the heavy-water nature of the 40-megawatt Arak reactor, given the requirement to change its heavy-water core, involves a costly and unproductive endeavor that will pose practical challenges due to external security considerations. This facility was previously intended to open a second pathway to plutonium, which can also be used in nuclear bomb production. Under the JCPOA, the pathway for military plutonium production is supposed to remain blocked for the next 15 years for the purposes of spent fuel processing and plutonium separation in Iran. Therefore, after removing the reactor's main core from its current location and filling it with concrete, the replacement reactor in Arak will not be capable of producing plutonium or commercially viable electricity. The fuel for the replacement reactor will be enriched uranium (3.5% uranium-235) instead of raw uranium (the conventional fuel used in heavy-water reactors), with minimal capacity for plutonium production. Iran lacks the necessary knowledge and technology to redesign and construct a replacement core for the Arak heavy-water reactor, and forming a foreign consortium for this purpose is unlikely to meet Iran's defined expectations in the short term. Due to ambiguities in implementing this part of the JCPOA agreement and Iran's insistence on maintaining the heavy-water nature of the Arak nuclear reactor, which has also been emphasized in the recent 9-point recommendation by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, the related agreement, which has been approved as an annex document by some member countries of the 1+5 group, has not yet been published. It seems that Iran's political leadership has turned the issue of maintaining the heavy-water nature of the Arak reactor into a matter of prestige, and consequently, without a clear picture of Iran's and the region's security needs and considerations for the next 15 years, it continues to seek a return to the current point after the expiration of the 15-year limitations resulting from the acceptance and implementation of the JCPOA. In addition to negotiations with four foreign countries, including China, Japan, and the United States, regarding the modification of the Arak reactor's core, Russia has also taken the lead in actions regarding the reconstruction of Fordow and its transformation from a protected enrichment center to a non-radioactive atomic research and study center for the production of stable isotopes, at Iran's expense. For this purpose, Nikolai Spassky, Deputy of Rosatom and executor of the Bushehr nuclear reactor reconstruction project, visited Tehran on November 12 and held negotiations with Ali Akbar Salehi in this regard. The Iranian government is trying to make progress in these two areas before the December 15 report by the Secretary-General of the Agency regarding the clarification of past activities suspected of having military dimensions. Although accepting the JCPOA prevents Iran from acquiring military-capacity plutonium for the next 15 years, the prohibition on purchasing processed plutonium or separating plutonium from spent fuel in any other nuclear reactor is also subject to these commitments. According to another section of the document signed in Lausanne, Iran implicitly will be able to enter this process after the expiration of the 15-year deadline. Some foreign critics of the JCPOA view this section of the Lausanne document as a potential pathway for Iran's future access to a primitive nuclear bomb. To block this pathway, the negotiating parties with Iran, especially the United States, which has formed a special commission to monitor the full implementation of the JCPOA for this reason, will keep Iran's actions under scrutiny using all tools and regulations during the predicted years. According to the agreement, 350 kilograms of initial spent fuel and 90 kilograms of secondary fuel for the replacement reactor in Arak will be produced and delivered by a foreign consortium, and after use, it will be removed from Iran. The capacity of the replacement core will be reduced to half of the current capacity (20 megawatts). During the 15-year implementation of this plan, Iran will not be allowed to produce raw uranium fuel pellets, and Iran's heavy-water production, which was previously intended to meet the needs of a 40-megawatt reactor, will be under the supervision of the Agency and the 1+5 group. The imposition of these restrictions, which will certainly strip the previous capacity and the original heavy-water nature from the Arak reactor, raises the unavoidable question of what scientific or economically justifiable goal the Islamic Republic is pursuing by insisting on maintaining the remnants of a reactor that will undoubtedly change its nature while enduring round-the-clock supervision for the next 15 years, equipping an expensive international consortium to design and install a new core in Arak, and provoking security suspicions. Wouldn't it be a more logical solution to completely shut down the current Arak reactor and instead build an advanced research reactor at a lower cost and much shorter time, with fewer problems and foreign interventions, rather than repeating the illogical and hybrid design of the Bushehr nuclear reactor?