Iranian Breakout Study Drastically Overestimates Time to Nuclear Weapon | Institute for Science and International Security

An Iranian website, www.nuclearenergy.ir recently posted an apparently quasi-official government study, How long would an Iranian ‘breakout’ really take? The study makes the dubious claims that Iran would need three years in the case of making a nuclear weapon with highly enriched uranium and 5-7 years to make one out of plutonium produced in the Arak reactor. Furthermore, this study asserts incorrectly that Iran would need at least 18 months to break out and produce enough weapon-grade uranium (WGU, more than 90 percent enriched) for a nuclear weapon, defined as 25 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium, or one “significant quantity.” (Breakout is typically defined as only the step of producing weapon-grade uranium and does not include the other parts of making the nuclear weapon. The Iranian study uses breakout to include all the steps of making a nuclear weapon.)