Iran ready to double nuclear work in bunker: IAEA

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground plant after installing all the centrifuges it was built for, a U.N. report said, a move likely to increase Western alarm about Tehran's nuclear course.

It also showed that Iran's stockpile of its most sensitive nuclear material - which could relatively quickly be processed further to bomb-grade uranium - had grown and was getting closer to an amount that could be sufficient for a nuclear weapon.

The latest quarterly International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran came 10 days after the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama, ..

But the U.N. watchdog's findings underlined the tough task facing world powers seeking to pressure Iran to curb atomic activity they fear is aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability, a charge Tehran denies.

"The report paints the picture of Iran's continued lack of cooperation with the IAEA, and details its continued enrichment and installation of centrifuges in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions," a senior Western diplomat said.

The Islamic state has put in place the nearly 2,800 centrifuges that the Fordow enrichment site, buried deep inside a mountain, was designed for, and is poised to double the number of them operating to roughly 1,400 from 700 now, according to the confidential IAEA report.

"They can be started any day. They are ready," a senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA's investigation said.

If Iran chose to dedicate the new machines to produce higher-grade uranium, it could significantly shorten the time required .. to build an atomic bomb. Iran says it needs to refine uranium to make reactor fuel.

In another potentially worrying development for the West, Iran appears to have virtually stopped converting this uranium into making civilian reactor fuel since the previous report.

a couple hours earlier off the wire..

Iran’s first nuclear plant may have suffered new setback
Fredrik Dahl | Reuters

http://news.yahoo.com/irans-first-nuclear-plant-may-suffered-setback-183055148.html

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran unloaded nuclear fuel from its first atomic power plant last month, a United Nations report said on Friday, a few months after the Russian builder said the long-postponed reactor was operating at full capacity.

The Bushehr plant is a symbol of what the Islamic Republic says is its peaceful nuclear ambitions, disputed by the West, and any new hitch would probably be seen as an embarrassment both for Tehran and Moscow, whose experts help run it.

The transfer of fuel assemblies from the reactor core to a spent fuel pond meant the plant was shut down, a diplomat familiar with the issue said. “It was certainly not foreseen, that’s for sure,” he said.

The reason for the unexpected move was unclear but it could be a sign of a new problem in running the Russian-built, 1,000-megawatt reactor near the Gulf city of Bushehr.

On November 6-7, “the agency conducted an inspection of BNPP (Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant) and verified that the fuel assemblies were in the spent fuel pond,” the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report on Iran’s nuclear program, giving no further detail on the matter.

Bushehr was plugged into Iran’s national grid in September 2011, a move intended to end years of delays and perceptions that Moscow was using the project as a diplomatic lever to extract Iranian agreement on other issues.

In August this year, Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said it was fully operational.

Early last year, Iran said it was having to remove fuel for tests. A source close to the matter said this was done due to concern that metal particles from nearly 30-year-old equipment used in the construction of the reactor core had contaminated the fuel.

Iran’s mission to the U.N. nuclear watchdog was not immediately available for comment on Friday.

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