Do a google for "petrodollar vs petroeuro".
It's surpising to note that in 2000 Saddam insisted that all oil from Iraq be paid for with Euros. Hostilities soon escalated.
In 2003, Iran announced an intention to build an Iranian Oil 'bourse' that would compete with the IPE in London and the NYMEX oil exchanges and its primary trade currency would be the Euro.
Soon after that, Pres. Bush announced plans to take action, citing that they were building nuclear weapons.
Iran
does,however, have a nuclear power network.
Quote:
Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it has not ratified two additional protocols to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Program 93 + 2, which is designed to prevent states from developing nuclear weapons covertly despite IAEA inspections as Iraq was able to do prior to the Gulf War. Iran maintains that it will not ratify 93 + 2 due to it being denied civilian nuclear technology for Bushehr, despite its positive record with the IAEA.
Nuclear power industry contacts between Iran and Russia are based on the intergovernmental agreements of 25 August 1992, on cooperation in the civil use of nuclear energy and in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran.
...President Mohammad Khatami said on 23 December 2002 that Iran was committed to its obligations and had no intention to develop nuclear weapons. He said that Iran's willingness to send spent fuel back to Russia showed that it did not want to use it for weapons, since the nuclear waste from Bushire plant would be taken to Russia for safekeeping.
According to Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, if Iran were to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty and renounce the agreement with Russia, the Bushehr reactor could produce a quarter ton of plutonium per year, which Leventhal says is enough for at least 30 atomic bombs. See also Plutonium from Light Water Reactors as Nuclear Material, Harmon W.Hubbard, April 2003.
Normally for electrical power production the uranium fuel remains in the reactor for three to four years, which produces a plutonium of 60 percent or less Pu-239, 25 percent or more Pu-240, 10 percent or more Pu-241, and a few percent Pu-242. The Pu-240 has a high spontaneous rate of fission, and the amount of Pu-240 in weapons-grade plutonium generally does not exceed 6 percent, with the remaining 93 percent Pu-239. Higher concentrations of Pu-240 can result in pre-detonation of the weapon, significantly reducing yield and reliability. For the production of weapons-grade plutonium with lower Pu-240 concentrations, the fuel rods in a reactor have to be changed frequently, about every four months or less.
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http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/wo...an/bushehr.htm