Iran Testing 1,300 Centrifuges, U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Says

International nuclear inspectors have confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium at its Natanz facility, where about 1,300 centrifuges are now operational, Reuters reported today (see GSN, April 18).

Last week Iranian officials declared that the site had achieved “industrial-scale” capabilities, but diplomats described the current status as low-level, testing-scale operations, Reuters reported.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the site Sunday and Monday.  They were shown eight 164-centrifuge “cascades” operating with a feedstock gas, uranium hexafluoride, according to a letter to Iranian officials from Ollie Heinonen, head of the agency’s safeguards division.

The letter asks Iran to permit the agency to install monitoring equipment that it has requested for some time.  Earlier this year, agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that the agency would need to install cameras watching the centrifuges once 500 of the machines were working (see GSN, March 20).

“I trust that these arrangements will be implemented,” Heinonen said in his letter.

In trumpeting the nation’s enrichment capabilities last week, Iranian officials dodged disclosing the number of working centrifuges, perhaps to avoid comparisons to their oft-stated goal of installing 3,000 machines by the end of May, Reuters reported.

The lower numbers working today represent only a test capability and not the power to produce useful amounts of enriched uranium, according to diplomats

“The current feeding is at a very, very low level, only to condition the new centrifuges.  No enriched product is being made now,”' said a diplomat close to the agency.

“It's not productive activity,” said another diplomat accredited to the agency.  “We understand that they are just doing stress tests on the cascades to see if they will run smoothly” (Reuters/New York Times, April 19).

Despite the comments playing down the Iranian capability, the number of centrifuges is a significant increase from earlier this year, the Washington Post reported.

Only four centrifuge cascades were counted during agency inspections in February (see GSN, Feb. 22; Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, April 19).

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