IRAN’S President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called it a “historic” breakthrough. His scientists, he claimed on 11 April, had completed the nuclear fuel cycle by enriching uranium for nuclear power plants. Western leaders warned that Iran had taken another dangerous step towards acquiring nuclear weapons and that it must be stopped.
But both sides are guilty of exaggeration and “vacuous political posturing”, argues a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC think tank.
In natural uranium, the proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 is about 0.7 per cent. To fuel nuclear power stations, the proportion of U-235…
