Iran making progress in enriching uranium: diplomats
VIENNA, May 15: Iran has made progress in enriching uranium despite UN sanctions against this strategic work, UN nuclear inspectors learned on a visit last weekend to a key site, diplomats said on Tuesday.
This shows Iran moving towards meeting the claim made in April by its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Tehran had achieved an “industrial scale” of enrichment, the process which makes fuel for nuclear power reactors or, in highly refined form, the raw material for atom bombs.
Iran is defying demands and sanctions from the UN Security Council for it to suspend enrichment, due to fears that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
The UN watchdog International Atomic is to file a report by May 23 on Tehran's nuclear work, and this could lead to further sanctions.
“They are speeding up some centrifuges (the machines which spin rotors at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium) and beginning to enrich towards an industrial level” at a plant in Natanz, one diplomat said.
Iran previously had been running centrifuges slowly, as many were breaking down, limiting the production of enriched uranium to what were considered research levels.
Iran has made it clear in negotiations with the European Union that its ability to carry out large-scale enrichment must be accepted as part of any eventual deal on Tehran's nuclear programme.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei that “from a proliferation perspective, the fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension (of uranium enrichment) -- keeping them from getting the knowledge -- has been overtaken by events,” an IAEA spokesman reported, saying this wording was agreed on for an article published by The New York Times on Tuesday.
“Until all outstanding verification issues (with an IAEA investigation) are clarified, and the agency is able to verify the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme, the focus should be to stop them from going to industrial scale production,” ElBaradei said, rather than expecting the Iranians to stop all enrichment.
Iran is seeking in an initial stage to get 3,000 centrifuges functioning, which could produce enough enriched uranium in a year for an atom bomb, and eventually to have 54,000 centrifuges up and running.
Iran maintains its nuclear work is a peaceful programme to generate electricity.
Iran had in April blocked IAEA inspectors from making an unannounced visit to the underground bunker at Natanz where it is building an industrial-scale enrichment facility, diplomats said.
“The Iranians have allowed the IAEA into Natanz but did not let the inspectors get close to the centrifuges” which are in a huge hall, the first diplomat said.
This prevented the IAEA from obtaining more detailed data, “such as how fast the centrifuges are spinning,” the diplomat said.
They also had not allowed unannounced visits, in which they are given two hours rather than a week's notice of the inspectors' arrival, despite having agreed to this in early April in return for IAEA surveillance cameras not being put in the cascade hall.But after strong pressure from the IAEA, the Iranians accepted an unannounced visit on Sunday to the underground hall at Natanz from inspectors who had arrived in Iran on Saturday evening, a second diplomat said.
A diplomat who closely follows the Iranian programme said that they had not mastered enrichment yet.
“They still have problems, a main one being to run the centrifuges for a long, long period,” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said that only some of the centrifuges were being run at full speed, even if all of them were being fed with the feedstock uranium gas used for enrichment.
The diplomat also said the Iranians had 1,600 centrifuges running and were installing “cascades” of 164 centrifuges at the rate of one cascade about every 10 days.
The IAEA has said the Iranians are enriching to levels corresponding to fuel, which is under five percent refined for the U-235 isotope.—AFP
