Posted on 05/25/2012 2:11:10 PM PDT by Olog-hai
United Nations nuclear inspectors have found uranium particles refined to a higher-than-expected level at an underground site where Iran has installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges, a U.N. watchdog report said on Friday.
It said Tehran had told the U.N. agency that the presence of traces of highly-refined uranium—still well below potential nuclear weapons-grade material—"may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator's control".
The United States—which like its Western allies and Israel accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bomb capability—said the Iranian explanation could be correct and a leading U.S. expert said he saw nothing "nefarious" in the discovery.
The International Atomic Energy Agency report came a day after six world powers—the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France—failed to convince Iran to halt its most sensitive nuclear work during May 23-24 talks in Baghdad.
At the heart of the dispute is Iran's insistence on a right to enrich uranium and that economic sanctions should be lifted before it shelves activities that could lead to its achieving the ability to assemble nuclear weapons.
Western powers insist Tehran must first shut down higher-grade enrichment before sanctions could be eased.
Iran started enriching to a fissile concentration of 20 percent in 2010 and has since sharply expanded the activity, saying the material will serve as fuel for a medical reactor.
But a suspicious West is alarmed since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 90 percent—or weapons-grade—uranium. …
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Nothing to see. Move along.
Did Hans Blix find a new job?
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