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Iran Nears Fast Enrichment
Iran has put into operation the advanced centrifuges that are capable of enriching uranium at higher speed, IAEA diplomats told reporters Wednesday night. With new technology, Iran needs a few months to produce the uranium in quantity sufficient for creating a nuclear bomb.
Iran launched a new generation of advanced centrifuges, the so-called IR-2s, that are the modification of P-1 centrifuges, the diplomats from Vienna office of IAEA said on condition of anonymity.
Publicly focused on the outdated P-1 centrifuges Iran, based the national project of uranium enrichment on exactly those facilities and IAEA experts confirmed past year the launch of 3,000 P-1s at Iran’s underground enrichment plant in Natanz.
Meanwhile, Tehran upgraded P-1 into P-2, which accelerated uranium enrichment by two or three times, and designed the IR-2 centrifuges of next generation.
Tehran managed to produce only ten machines of the new type. Their assembly was completed in January and the tests are currently underway in Natanz. They have begun processing small quantities of the gas required to set into motion the uranium enrichment process. With prototypes available, the mass production of new centrifuges is a matter of time, the analysts say.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 15, 2008
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