Iran expands advanced centrifuge work underground, according to an IAEA report
- Iran has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges in a cluster at an underground enrichment complex, as per a long-standing plan, and now plans to add two more such clusters or cascades,
- The actions are detailed in a classified IAEA report provided to member nations soon before the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors published a resolution criticizing Iran for failing to explain uranium traces discovered at undeclared locations.
- Iran’s largest commercial-scale Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) is in Natanz, and it was built underground to protect it from aerial bombing.
Iran has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges in a cluster at an underground enrichment complex, as per a long-standing plan, and now plans to add two more such clusters, or cascades.
The actions are detailed in a classified IAEA report provided to member nations soon before the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors published a resolution criticizing Iran for failing to explain uranium traces discovered at undeclared locations. Iran had threatened to retaliate.
Iran’s largest commercial-scale Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) is in Natanz, and it was built underground to protect it from aerial bombing.
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Iran was only allowed to employ first-generation, IR-1 centrifuges under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, but as the deal unravelled in the wake of then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal in 2018, Iran erected cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges, such as the IR-2m and IR-4.
Tehran, on the other hand, had been delaying the installation of a cascade of IR-6 machines for months.
The report stated, “On June 6, 2022, the Agency verified at FEP that Iran had begun to install IR-6 centrifuges in the aforementioned single cascade originally declared by Iran to the Agency.”
Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a letter dated June 6 that it intends to install two “new cascades” of IR-6 machines at the subterranean complex.
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