Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!
Rules
The common answer is nuclear proliferation. Power is one thing but it’s just a hop away from weapons.
The international community has a vested interest in some of the more… reactionary… countries not having weapons of mass destruction.
That said, the reality isn’t so simple and often these arguments make for good excuses to justify acting on other interests.
It’s an incredibly complex topic.
Normal enrichment for power and domestic use is around 5%. Iran is enriching to 60% which is only ever used as a precursor to building weapons.
That said there are no good reasons other than to distract from the genocide in Gaza. This whole thing is a sideshow so they can finish the job there first.
They are over 83% at this point
Not according to the IAEA unless you have a more up to date source than May.
This was the article talking about IAEA finding particles at over 83%
Good reason to be suspect but I don't know if it's enough to claim they are enriching to that level.
There isn’t really any reason to enrich to 60% if you aren’t going for weapons grade, 20% HALEU fuel is the highest breakeven I know of where the benefit to enrich to 20% can in certain reactors outweigh the cost of enrichment but even then 20% is considered uncommonly high for most power plants 60% is just another beast with a hugely added cost
Yes, but they pinky swear that one batch was a mistake. /s
And TBF they only started gradually enriching to higher levels when the US broke their own nuclear agreement.
They're worried about nuclear weapons.
There's established rules about operating your nuclear program that says don't use it for producing nuclear weapons, only for nuclear energy or scientific research. If you start doing things like enrich uranium for weapons the existing nuclear powers don't like it. The US finds this a useful mechanism for achieving foreign policy goals.
There’s a genuine risk that if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, they might actually use it against Israel - they’ve more or less said as much. From a purely strategic standpoint, it makes more sense to act before they get there than to wait and deal with the consequences after. I think the U.S.’s role here would be to take out the underground facilities using their bunker-buster bombs, which Israel doesn’t have.
All posturing and bullying aside ….
Building a nuclear weapon is “easy” and the knowledge is generally available. However enriching uranium is much tougher. For many decades the most effective way to limit nuclear weapon proliferation has been to restrict enrichment efforts.
I hope you’re not questioning why it’s a good idea to limit how many countries have nuclear weapons. Sure, the ones that have them are due for plenty of criticism but you can’t escape the math of more countries with nuclear weapons means more chances of someone using one.
As a citizen of the only country to use a nuke in anger …. I’m fine with everyone else calling that out assuming they’re serious about preventing it from ever happening again
They want a monopoly on Force. Simple as that. They want to be able to enforce their will upon countries and nuclear weapons would stop them from doing that. That's the entire reason.
I mean, they're about 75 years too late for a monopoly.
Because the USA goes after anyone that fucked with their financial interests.
Because you could easily make a bomb if you're good at enriching. And they really, really don't trust Iran. Other countries are allowed to use nuclear power, including non-Western ones like Brazil and Mexico.
It's also worth noting the standard reactor designs need slight enrichment, but not all do. Canada's CANDU reactors have run on natural uranium for decades, and could in theory run on depleted uranium if you were to mix in plutonium or other actinides extracted from nuclear waste.
I was just telling little Jimmy about being a miner in the actinides mines....
Is this a quote? A search turns up nothing.
It was an attempt at humor since this is in ELI5