Iran Nuclear Plant Restarts Processing Uranium

Jenny Booth, The Times UK:

Iran today began processing uranium again at its nuclear plant near Isfahan, defying warnings from Europe and the United States that it was risking UN sanctions. Work resumed at Isfahan promptly after inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog finished installing surveillance equipment there. READ MORE

Iran had suspended work at the plant and its other nuclear facilities in November to avoid UN sanctions and as a gesture in negotiations with the Europeans.

"The Uranium Conversion Facility restarted its work a few minutes ago," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The facility, in a dry industrial area 15 km southeast of Isfahan in central Iran, converts raw uranium, known as yellowcake, into gas, the feedstock for enrichment.

In the next stage of the process - which Iran has said it will not resume for the time being - the gas is fed into centrifuges for enrichment. Uranium enriched to a low level is used to produce nuclear fuel and further enrichment makes it suitable for use in atomic bombs.

America and Israel say that they suspect that Iran is trying to manufacture nuclear weapons. Britain, France and Germany have been in talks with the Tehran government for two years in order to end the row.

Hopes for an end to the rumbling crisis took a blow when Tehran said publicly on Saturday that it would reject the EU proposals, that offered it economic and political incentives to halt nuclear fuel work for good.

At the Isfahan plant today two workers wearing white overalls, face masks and hard hats lifted a barrel full of uranium yellow cake, opened its lid and fed it into the processing line. Other workers at the plant watched excitedly via closed circuit television screens.

A nuclear scientist at the site, who declined to be named, said: "I am excited, I didn’t believe it until the last moment thinking this may not happen, but now I am very happy."

Earlier a journalist with the Reuters news agency, among a small group of local and foreign reporters invited to visit the plant, said that it was surrounded by dozens of anti-aircraft batteries, patrolled by heavy security and surrounded by barbed wire fences.

Iran denies that its nuclear programme is a front for bomb-making. It says it needs to develop nuclear power as an alternative energy source to meet booming electricity demand and preserve its oil and gas reserves for export.

It has offered to export the uranium hexafluoride produced at Isfahan to allay Western concerns that it could be enriched into bomb-grade material.