Iran Plans New Research Reactors

Iran on Monday announced it intends to construct several new research reactors that would be powered by 20 percent-enriched uranium, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, April 11).

The Middle Eastern state early last year began further refining low-enriched uranium from its stockpile, ostensibly to fuel an existing medical reactor in Tehran. The United States and other Western powers, though, have feared the process could help Iran produce nuclear-weapon material, which requires an enrichment level around 90 percent. Tehran has maintained its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

"In the next few years, four to five (research) reactors ... of 10 to 20 megawatts will be built" in Iran, Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Fereidoun Abbasi told the Iranian Students News Agency.

"Thus we need to continue enrichment to 20 percent in order to provide them with fuel," Abbasi said.

"Enrichment up to 20 percent will continue and will not halt. We will increase the volume of the 20 percent enrichment based on the country's needs. For this, we will not ask for permission from anyone," the official said, adding the reactors would "produce radioisotopes, and [enable] research and development."

The facilities "will be built in different provinces," Abbasi said without naming locations. The initial site "will take three to four years" to construct, he said.

Iran last summer said it would establish multiple additional reactors for generating medical isotopes for "sale and export to the regional and Islamic countries that need them." The first such site would be completed "within five years," the government indicated then.

Abbasi said the government would prepare material for the Tehran reactor "within the set timetable" (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, April 11).

The official added his nation's Qum facility "is prepared to host centrifuges" for uranium enrichment.

"Centrifuge machines are being built, and before installing them in [Qum], we will inform the (International Atomic Energy Agency]," he said (Agence France Presse II, April 11).

Iran previously indicated the plant was scheduled to open in the middle of 2011 and include no fewer than 3,000 enrichment centrifuges, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, April 12).

Iran might shorten the period it would need to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb if it deploys a significant quantity of next-generation uranium enrichment centrifuges, the Washington Post quoted specialists as saying (see GSN, April 5).

“If they can get the new machines performing well, and in large numbers, it will make a big difference,” former IAEA safeguards chief Olli Heinonen said. Several hundred of the higher-speed machines would require less than 12 months to generate sufficient fuel for a bomb, he said.

One U.S. intelligence official with knowledge of the Iran's atomic activities did not questions Heinonen's estimate. “U.S. intelligence officials share the IAEA’s concern” about Iran's growing atomic capacities, the source said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, April 11).

Meanwhile, Germany has rejected U.S. and European calls to shutter Europäisch-Iranische Handelsbank for purportedly supporting firms linked to Iranian weapons activities, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Berlin also prevented advancement of a French bid to impose EU penalties on the entity, according to two diplomats. Washington imposed its own penalties on the firm in September (David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, April 12).

http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110412_1008.php