Iran may be struggling with new nuclear machines | Reuters - 0 views
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contrary to some Western media reports in the run-up to Friday's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, Iran does not yet seem ready to deploy advanced enrichment equipment for large-scale production, despite years of development work, experts told Reuters.Instead, the IAEA document showed Iran was preparing to install thousands more centrifuges based on an erratic and outdated design, both in its main enrichment plant at Natanz and in a smaller facility at Fordow buried deep underground.
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"It appears that they are still struggling with the advanced centrifuges," said Olli Heinonen, a former chief nuclear inspector for the Vienna-based U.N. agency."We do not know whether the reasons for delays are lack of raw materials or design problems."Nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick said Iran had been working on "second-generation models for over ten years now and still can't put them into large-scale operation."
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In mid-February, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had a "fourth generation" centrifuge that could refine uranium three times faster than previously."Iran unveiled a third-generation model two years ago and then never said more about it," said Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank."Now it says it has a fourth-generation model, which is probably a variation of the problematic second-generation machines."
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The IAEA, which regularly inspects Iran's declared nuclear sites, has little access to facilities where centrifuges are assembled and the agency's knowledge of possible centrifuge progress is mainly limited to what it can observe at Natanz.Asked whether Iran may keep more modern centrifuges at a location which U.N. inspectors are not aware of, an official familiar with the issue said: "That is, of course, the million dollar question."
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Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges with several times the capacity of the 1970s-vintage, IR-1 version it now uses for the most sensitive part of its atomic activities.Marking a potential step forward, Iran last year started installing larger numbers of more modern IR-4 and IR-2m models for testing at a research and development site at the enrichment facility near the central town of Natanz.But last week's IAEA report suggested Iran was encountering problems testing them in interlinked networks known as cascades, said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) think tank.
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The IAEA said Iran had informed it in early February of plans to install three new types of centrifuge - IR-5, IR-6 and IR-6s - as single machines at the Natanz R&D site.When so many models are tested simultaneously, "it indicates that Iran has not yet reached a point where it can decide which would be the next generation centrifuge to be deployed," Heinonen, now at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.Fitzpatrick said: "Sooner or later Iran will probably crack the code on advanced centrifuges and introduce them in larger numbers, but so far that hasn't been possible."