Sunday, April 13, 2014

Iran: 30,000 New Centrifuges Needed for Fuel

Director of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said today Iran will need 30,000 of its new generation centrifuges to meet its domestic fuel demands.

“(Using) the Natanz enrichment facility to produce the annual fuel of Bushehr nuclear power plant, we need to build 30,000 new (IR-2) centrifuges,” Salehi said. (Fars News Agency, 13 March.)

Salehi’s estimate, if it becomes part of Iranian requirements at the ongoing nuclear talks, could create an impasse. The West has been seeking to keep Iran’s "breakout" capability, the amount of fissure material for one nuclear weapon, at at least 6 months to a year. Such plan would limit the number of old (IR-1) centrifuges to fewer than 6,000. Having 30,000 operating IR-2s, each 15 times more powerful than IR-1s, would give Iran an almost immediate breakout capability.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hrs right ,in order to supply the fuel for a commercial scale reactor like bushehr iran would need those sorts of numbers,it all depends upon how reliable the russians are when it comes to supplying the fuel and based upon their past history of failing to deliver on various agreements the answer would be not very.The best solution would be to have a large number of centrifuges in storage at secure fordow type sites so that in the event of any violations of any deal by the us/israel or russia iran could very quickly restart enrichment on a larger scale

Anonymous said...

And future Iranian marine vessels with nuclear propulsions, will require higher enriched uranium beyond that of 20% level.

Is the West going to consider and provide solutions to that kind of Iranian needs ??

fmr political prisoner and refugee