Iran Starts Up Advanced Centrifuges
Thursday, Feb. 07, 2008 By AP/GEORGE JAHN
(VIENNA, Austria) — Iran's nuclear project has developed its own version of an advanced centrifuge to churn out enriched uranium much faster than its previous machines, diplomats and experts said Thursday.
They said that few of the IR-2 centrifuges were operating and that testing appeared to be in an early phase, with the new machines rotating without processing any uranium gas.
More significant, the officials said, is the fact that Iran appears to have used know-how and equipment bought on the nuclear black market in combination with domestic ingenuity to overcome daunting technical difficulties and create highly advanced centrifuges.
Iran's uranium enrichment work has raised concerns in Washington and other Western capitals because it can produce the radioactive material needed for nuclear bombs. Tehran says it is only pursuing lower-level enrichment to make fuel for atomic reactors that will generate electricity.
Iran is under two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, which it started developing during nearly two decades of covert nuclear activity built on illicit purchases and revealed only five years ago..
As reported on line by Time and MSNBC.
Updates from MSNBC
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell; 080217 CNN.... contended that the threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons has not changed much despite a U.S. intelligence report released in December that concluded Tehran halted its nuclear weapons ambitions in 2003. McConnell said Iran had terminated one aspect of a technical design but "they could have turned it back on now and we wouldn't necessarily know." "They could do it by 2009 -- unlikely," he said, referring to the ability to make a nuclear bomb. "The range is 2010 to 2015. And the best guess is about the middle range there for having a nuclear weapon."
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