Iran declares major breakthroughs in nuclear drive

[Naveed Yaseen]

ISFAHAN (April 10 2009): Iran declared on Thursday major advances in its controversial atomic drive as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened a nuclear fuel plant and announced the testing of two high capacity centrifuges. Ahmadinejads announcements at a function in Isfahan province marking national nuclear day are likely to trigger fresh concerns among world powers, who fear Irans nuclear programme is aimed at making atomic weapons, but Washingtons 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 Irans 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 technology 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.

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