Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Uranium Enrichment, Centrifuges and the Iran Crisis

R Rajaraman

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

A major crisis is brewing in the Gulf region, involving Iran on one side and the US
on the other, with Europe caught in between. The issue in contention is Iran’s
program to produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
This subject has both geopolitical and technological aspects to it, each rich enough
to fill a whole lecture on its own. In this talk, designed for IMSc students, I will
primarily discuss the technical aspects—starting from Nuclear Chain reactions,
Fissile materials, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), their
production, Centrifuges, Cascades and Uranium Enrichment.
But, I hope to enliven the technical portions by interspersing them with glimpses of
the history and the geopolitics of the crisis and a couple of nice photographs.
I will try to bring the audience up to date on where the crisis stands on the 9 th of
August 2019.