Iran Nuclear Watch: 6000 Uranium Enrichment Centrifuges
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks with photographers while waiting for a meeting at the presidential palace in Tehran. Iran is starting work to install 6,000 new uranium-enriching centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz, Ahmadinejad announced on Tuesday, according to state media.
Years of negotiations with Iran and three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions later, Iran President Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran will be installing 6,000 new uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz.
Iran has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, state television quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Tuesday.
Iran already has about 3,000 centrifuges operating in Natanz, and the new announcement is seen as a show of defiance of international demands to halt a nuclear program the United States and its allies say is aimed at building nuclear weapons.
“The president announced the start of the phase of installing 6,000 new centrifuges in Natanz,” state television reported.
Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium to a low level to produce nuclear fuel or a high level for use in a weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and solely focused on the production of energy.
Ahmadinejad made Tuesday’s announcement as he toured the Natanz facility in central Iran. State television also quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that “other activities have been carried out” in Natanz that he would announce later Tuesday.
The president’s trip was scheduled to coincide with Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology, marking the second anniversary of Iran’s first enrichment of uranium.
Ahmadinejad is widely expected to confirm for the first time that Iran has installed hundreds of more sophisticated centrifuges that can enrich uranium faster.
The workhorse of Iran’s enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.
So, you have many more Iran nuclear centrifuges and more sophisticated ones that enrich uranium faster despite the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.
Here are the United Nations Security Council resolutions that Iran has defied (in pdf format):
It looks to Flap that the Bush administration, woefully unsuccessful in convincing China, and Russia to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons has decided to punt the issue to the next President while bolstering missile defense to protect America from ICBM’s launched from Iran. A Cold War containment strategy is the holding pattern for now.
Is this why Europe is now interested in an American deployed anti-missile defense, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic?
You bet……
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