Donald Trump didn't like the Iran deal's 2031 deadline, but by then we will have the tech to continue keeping a lid on Iran’s – and others’ - nuclear ambitions

How will US withdrawal from the nuclear deal affect Iran? hmad Halabsiaz/Eyevine

US President Donald Trump has left the 2015 deal that limited Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons. Although Iran has complied with every requirement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the US won’t keep its side of the agreement: Trump plans to re-impose heavy trade sanctions.

The other parties to the deal – the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia – still support it. But the threat of US penalties is expected to massively discourage firms from trade and investment in Iran, which could cause the JCPOA to collapse.

Under the deal, Iran is able to enrich uranium to a limited extent for use in nuclear power plants, but it cannot make highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make a bomb. Trump’s main complaint is that the stringent limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment end in 2031 – whereupon, says the US, it can resume making highly enriched uranium. But that ignores technology being developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency that could keep such safeguards in place beyond then.


“A lot of the JCPOA lasts forever,” says Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association in Washington DC. When extra-stringent inspections end in 2031, Iran switches back to normal IAEA monitoring rules under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In the past that monitoring, based on infrequent inspections, didn’t stop Iran covertly enriching uranium and working towards developing a bomb. But that may not be the case in the future.

Remote monitoring

The IAEA plans to update the rules for all countries in the treaty without nuclear weapons – not just Iran – to require secure, remote monitoring of the flow of uranium isotopes through enrichment plants. For that it is developing new, remote monitoring technology that should be ready by 2031.

One such monitoring system, developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has even debuted in Iran. The Online Enrichment Monitor uses a gamma ray detector to measure U-235 – the isotope enriched in highly enriched uranium – in the gas passing between centrifuges in an enrichment plant.

Combining these readings with temperature and pressure sensors allows the system to determine how much the gas has been enriched. It could be stationed at the start and finish of an enrichment line. If it detects too much U-235, it is possible the plant is being used to create material for a weapon.

This monitor alone isn’t fool-proof. “It can be spoofed by adding or removing uranium at points in the process that are not monitored,” says Robert Goldston of Princeton University.

Enrichment warning

But Goldston and his colleagues have modelled ways this could happen and say a clutch of other technologies under development could together provide near-real time warning if a plant operator tries to break the rules.

Load monitors being developed at Oak Ridge would let the IAEA measure how fast uranium enters and leaves the enrichment process, says Goldston. Tools being developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle automatically measure the mass in cylinders of material that enter and leave the plant. Together, these could account for all the uranium passing through enrichment. Cameras with pattern recognition focused on pipework and detectors for unusual neutrons, gamma rays or chemical release could also reveal illicit changes to the enrichment process.

All this can be made tamper-proof using technologies the IAEA has already developed for monitoring plants that store or reprocess spent nuclear fuel, ranging from paint or welds that reveal when monitoring equipment has been opened, to backup electrical power so it cannot be unplugged. Data would be sent securely to the IAEA. Anything unusual could trigger an “unannounced access” inspection.

The technology isn’t quite ready yet. The 2031 JCPOA deadline would give the IAEA time to put such a stringent monitoring regime based on these devices in place, says Goldston. But if the deal collapses now, Iran will at best go back to the infrequent monitoring that allowed it to work on a bomb before – and will have little incentive to trust international promises again.