US President Donald Trump claimed yesterday that Iran has agreed that it will not possess any nuclear weapons and will hand over its “nuclear dust”. He uses this term to describe Iran’s reserves of highly enriched uranium.
Since the US-Iran nuclear talks in February, Witkoff, formerly a real estate developer who now leads US negotiations with Iran along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has made claims that experts say reflect the weakness of his expertise.
There is no word like nuclear dust, Trump’s knowledge is ZERO
“Nuclear dust” is not a familiar term in the nuclear power industry. Experts say the way Trump and his chief negotiator Steve Witkoff have talked about uranium enrichment raises doubts about how much they actually understand its technical intricacies.
Enrichment of uranium is necessary to produce a nuclear chain reaction sufficient for weapons or energy production.
Uranium is found in abundance in the Earth’s crust, but most of it, about 99%, is an isotope called uranium-238, which is relatively resistant to fission. The chain reaction requires the uranium-235 isotope, which has an odd number of neutrons, making its nucleus easier to break.
For use as fuel in nuclear reactors, or to make an explosive nuclear weapon, uranium is “enriched” to increase the concentration of uranium-235. Different levels of enrichment also have very different uses and strategic importance.
Since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in his first term, Iran has been enriching its uranium closer to “weapons-grade” levels, meaning it can be used to make nuclear weapons.