At a place called Arak in the desert southwest of Tehran, behind barbed wire and anti-aircraft guns, Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear reactor. The government says it will produce radioactive isotopes for medical treatments. As an unavoidable byproduct, it will also make plutonium, one of the primary fuels for atom bombs.

At the International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors are trying to make sure that Tehran never uses its nuclear infrastructure to make weapons. Indeed, for just that reason, the agency’s board has repeatedly called on the Iranians to abandon Arak. Yet when the board meets this week in Vienna, it will consider an Iranian request for technical help in safely completing the reactor, which is to go on line as soon as 2009.

Read more at the International Herald