Nuclear drive:
Iran declares major breakthrough
IRAN: Iran declared yesterday major advances in its atomic
drive as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened a nuclear fuel plant and
announced the testing of two high capacity centrifuges.
Ahmadinejad’s announcements at a function in Isfahan province marking
national nuclear day are likely to trigger fresh concerns among world
powers, who fear Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at making atomic
weapons, but Washington’s first reactions were sceptical.
Tehran insists its programme is for peaceful purposes only.
Ahmadinejad said Iran has notched up two achievements — the
manufacture of nuclear fuel and “testing of two kinds of new centrifuges
having greater capacity (to enrich uranium) than the existing ones.”
He was speaking after cutting the ribbon at the fuel facility in
Isfahan, which the Mehr news agency said can produce 10 tonnes of
nuclear fuel annually to feed the heavy water 40-megawatt Arak reactor
and 30 tonnes for light water reactors such as the Bushehr nuclear
plant.
The fuel for Bushehr has to meet Russian technical specifications, as
the plant has been constructed by Moscow and will be initially operated
by Russian engineers.
The opening of the fuel plant indicates that Iran has mastered the
complete nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to enrichment, even as
world powers urge the Islamic republic to halt its programme completely.
“Today the nuclear fuel cycle has been practically completed and
there is no room for the idea of halting (uranium) enrichment in the
negotiations” with global powers, the head of Iran’s parliamentary
commission of national security and foreign policy, Alaeddin Borujerdi,
said after the plant was opened.
Speaking at the same function as Ahmadinejad, atomic chief Gholam
Reza Aghazadeh said Iran has reached a “new phase of acquiring the
technolgy of uranium enrichment.”
“Today in Natanz there are around 7,000 centrifuges installed,” he
said of the uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province. On February
25, he said Iran had 6,000 centrifuges installed there. In its February
19 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said 3,964 centrifuges
were actively enriching uranium in Natanz.
The UN body said another 1,476 were undergoing vacuum or dry run
tests without nuclear material and 125 had been installed but remained
stationary.
Uranium enrichment is at the heart of global fears that Iran is
secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, because the process can be
used both to make nuclear fuel and the fissile core of an atom bomb.
ISFAHAN, Friday, AFP |