US says new Iran centrifuges would be ‘provocative’

Friday, 22 February 2013 04:49

Posted by Asad Naeem

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00-34WASHINGTON: The United States warned Iran Thursday that the installation of next-generation centrifuges at one of its main nuclear plants, as reported by the UN nuclear watchdog, would be a “provocative step.”

The move “would be a further escalation and a continuing violation of Iran’s obligations under the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and IAEA board resolutions,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

“So it would mark yet another provocative step,” she added.

The International Atomic Energy Agency earlier said Iran started installing the new IR-2m centrifuges this month at the Natanz plant.

“This is the first time that centrifuges more advanced than the IR-1 have been installed” at the plant in central Iran, an IAEA report said.

Nuclear enrichment is at the heart of the dispute over Tehran’s disputed program, which the West and Israel say is a front to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its program is strictly for peaceful purposes.

White House spokesman Jay Carney warned Tehran it had a “choice.”

“If it fails to address the concerns of the international community, it will face more pressure and become increasingly isolated,” he said.

“The burden of sanctions could be eased, but the onus is on Iran to turn its stated readiness to negotiate, into tangible action.”

The IAEA report comes five days before Iran is set to sit down with world powers in Kazakhstan for the latest round of talks on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

The talks between the so-called P5+1 — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — and Iran will be the first since June, when three rounds of meetings ended in stalemate in Moscow.

Carney insisted the P5+1 was “united” in its approach on Iran.

“We simply call on the Iranians to arrive at those talks with the intention of having them be substantive and focused on the issues that are of concern here to the international community,” he added.

Nuland, who said the report of new centrifuges was no surprise, urged Iran to consider “another path… the diplomatic path.”

“They have an opportunity to come to those talks ready to be serious, ready to allay the international community’s concerns, and we hope they take that opportunity,” she said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2013

via US says new Iran centrifuges would be ‘provocative’.

Iran Upgrading Nuclear Equipment, Inspectors Say – NYTimes.com.

Iran Is Said to Move to New Machines for Making Nuclear Fuel

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: February 21, 2013

WASHINGTON — Just days before Iran enters its first nuclear talks with the West since the summer, international nuclear inspectors said Thursday that the country has begun installing a new generation of equipment that should give it the ability to produce nuclear fuel much faster.

The installation — at Iran’s main plant for uranium enrichment, located in the desert at Natanz — came after a half-decade of delays exacerbated by Western sanctions and sabotage. The new centrifuges are four to five times more powerful than an aging model that Iran has used for years. The advance has worried American, European and Israeli officials because it would make it easier for Iran to race toward making fuel for nuclear weapons, if it decided to do so.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, called the installation of the advanced machines “yet another provocative step” and “a further escalation” in Iran’s continuing violation of the United Nations demand that Tehran suspend its program of uranium enrichment.

But even as Iran installed the more powerful equipment, evidence collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that the Iranian authorities are deliberately slowing the accumulation of the medium-enriched uranium that could most quickly be converted to bomb fuel. According to a new report by the agency, much of that production has been diverted to make specialized fuel for a research reactor.

The new report says Iran has diverted about 40 percent of its growing stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium into an oxide form that can be used to make fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. So far, the report said, Iran used the collected material to produce at least five fuel assemblies.

The result is that Iran has delayed the day when it could reach what Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, defined as his latest “red line” beyond which Iran would not be allowed to pass: the accumulation of enough medium-enriched fuel to make a single nuclear weapon. At the time Mr. Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations last fall, it appeared that Iran would reach that point — about 240 kilograms (or 530 pounds) of uranium, enriched to 20 percent purity — by early this summer.

If production remains at roughly the same rate, it appears that date will now slip into the fall, allowing more time for diplomatic progress.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said nothing about that apparent slowing when it released a statement quoting the prime minister as saying the findings were “a very grave report which proves that Iran is continuing to make rapid progress toward the red line.” It added that “the first subject” Mr. Netanyahu will discuss with President Obama during his planned visit to Israel next month is preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.

The inspectors’ report also indicated there was no evidence of any explosion or other setback at the deep-underground nuclear facility called Fordo, which is regularly visited by inspectors. Reports, fueled by a right-wing Web site with ties to the Iranian opposition, had suggested a major explosion at the site that crippled its equipment. That report, which appeared in a number of European newspapers, now appears to have been false.

The report said that Iran, in addition to deploying new centrifuges, added 2,255 of the older models at Natanz, the biggest such jump in years.

The new centrifuges are known as IR-2, short for Iranian second generation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disclosed research on the spinning machinery more than six years ago, boasting that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers.

Testing the new centrifuges at the Natanz site began in early 2008, and reached an advanced stage at the pilot plant in 2011. But until recently, technical problems had delayed their introduction into the cavernous underground halls of the nearby production plant, which is roughly half the size of the Pentagon.

One mystery is why Iran is installing these centrifuges at Natanz. It is just barely underground, and vulnerable to air attack. It is also the plant that was struck by a series of American and Israeli cyberattacks, part of a classified program called “Olympic Games” that resulted in a temporary setback.

Centrifuges spin extraordinarily fast to accumulate the rare form of uranium that can fuel atom bombs or nuclear reactors.

The IR-2 is based on Pakistan’s second-generation model. The rotor of the Pakistani machine, made of superhard steel, can spin much faster than the original model, speeding the pace of enrichment.

But Iran had great difficulty building the machines and obtaining the special steel. Mostly in secret, it instead developed its own version. The fact that it is partly indigenous signals that the Iranians have achieved new levels of technical expertise.

Western experts say the IR-2 is roughly half the height of Iran’s original machine but spins twice as fast. Its rotor is made of carbon fibers, which Iran has also experienced difficulty making and importing because of Western sanctions.

Iran tries to speed up nuclear work – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Tehran begins installing advanced centrifuges in Natanz plant in effort to speed up uranium enrichment, IAEA report says

( I ask any Fordow skeptic, “Why in Natanz, which can be bombed and not in the “impregnable” Fordow? – JW )

Reuters

Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, a UN nuclear report said on Thursday, a defiant step likely to anger world powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week.

In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had been hooked up at the plant near the central town of Natanz. They were not yet operating.

If launched successfully, such machines could enable Iran to significantly speed up its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy purposes.

The deployment of the new centrifuges underlines Iran’s continued refusal to bow to Western pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically without a spiral into Middle East war.

Ahmadinejad in Natanz plant (Photo: EPA)

Iran’s installation of new-generation centrifuges would be “yet another provocative step,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

White House spokesman Jay Carney warned Iran that it would face further pressure and isolation if it fails to address international concerns about its nuclear programme in the Feb. 26 talks with world powers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.

Britain’s Foreign Office said the IAEA’s finding was of “serious concern”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the report “proves that Iran continues to advance swiftly towards the red line” that he laid down last year.

Six world powers and Iran are due to meet for the first time in eight months in Kazakhstan on February 26 to try again to break the impasse but analysts expect no real progress toward defusing suspicions of an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons capability.

In a more encouraging sign for the powers, however, the IAEA report said Iran in December resumed converting some of its uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent to powder for the production of reactor fuel.

That helped restrain the growth of Iran’s higher-grade uranium stockpile since the previous report in November, a development that could buy more time for diplomacy and delay possible Israeli military action.

The report said Iran had increased to 167 kg (367 pounds) its stockpile of 20 percent uranium – a level it says it needs to make fuel for a Tehran research reactor but which also takes it much closer to weapons-grade material if processed further.

Bushehr shutdown

One diplomat familiar with the report said this represented a rise of about 18-19 kg since the November report, a notable slowdown from the previous three-month period when the stockpile jumped by nearly 50 percent after Iran halted conversion.

About 240-250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium is needed for one atomic bomb if refined to a high degree.

Israel, which has warned it might bomb arch-enemy Iran’s nuclear sites as a last resort, last year gave a rough deadline of mid-2013 as the date by which Tehran could have enough higher-grade uranium to produce a single atomic bomb.

But a resumption of conversion, experts say, means the Israeli “red line” for action can be postponed.

Iran resumed converting higher-grade enriched uranium for fuel production in December and had since fed 28.3 kg of the material for this stated purpose, the report said.

Refined uranium can fuel nuclear energy plants, which is Iran’s stated aim, or provide the core of an atomic bomb, which the United States and Israel suspect may be its ultimate goal.

The report further said that “extensive” activities – an allusion to clean-up and renovations – at Iran’s Parchin military site would seriously undermine an IAEA investigation to determine whether explosives tests relevant to nuclear weapons was done there. Iran has so far refused access to Parchin.

Iran had informed the UN agency during an inspection of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in mid-February that the reactor was shut down, the report added, giving no details. The Russian-built plant on Iran’s Gulf coast is the Islamic state’s first nuclear energy station, but has been plagued by delays.

Netanyahu: Iran closer than ever… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.