In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence.
Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said.
The new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration’s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.
You can’t destroy it but you can unpurify it.
By what, adding in less reactive species? What they probably have in mind is to pour a truckload of concrete on it.
You add it to enough regular uranium or uranium ore that the enrichment goes under fuel rod levels. One part weapons-grade to 4 parts unenriched uranium should be safe.
Adding it to concrete is not very effective, it’s easy to purify uranium from other elements and then you just get your enriched uranium back. For separating elements you can use chemistry, only separating isotopes is hard.
I don’t think the United States have any intention of handing any of this uranium back to Iran were they to get their hands on it, hence there would be no pint in de-enrichment. My point is that they are probably going to store it in concrete dry cask storage somewhere they can secure, if they aren’t going to put it for use to their own ends.