By Trend

Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi told ISNA on Wednesday that Iran is completing installation of centrifuges at Fordow uranium enrichment plant.

Reuters reported on Oct.25 citing European diplomats that Iran appears to have nearly finished installing centrifuges at its underground nuclear plant, Western diplomats say, potentially boosting its capacity to make weapons-grade uranium if it chose to do so.

Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow plant, built inside a mountain to shield it from air strikes, in 2009 after learning that Western spy services had detected it.

The United States and its allies are particularly worried about Fordow because Iran is refining uranium there to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which Iran says it needs for a medical reactor.

The diplomats said they had heard of indications that Iran had put in place the last 640 or so uranium centrifuges of a planned total of some 2,800 at the site, but had not started running them yet.

"I understand that they have installed all the centrifuges there," one envoy said.

Another diplomat said he also believed that the centrifuges had been placed in position, but that piping and other preparations needed to operate them may not yet be completed.

Twenty percent purity is only a short technical step from weapons grade, and the work goes to the heart of Western fears that a program that Iran says is purely peaceful is in fact a cover for the development of a nuclear weapons capability.

 

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