The Iran Horn boosts nuclear activities

Iran to boost nuclear activities, uranium enrichment

Alfredo Boyd

Iran is ready , the spokesman for for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said on Sunday during a visit to a park in Qazvin.

Behrouz Kamalvandi said that this would include boosting uranium enrichment to 190,000 Separative Work Units. The announcement could raise concerns in Europe about Iran’s goals under the Iran Deal and comes amid US sanctions that were put in place last year after the US withdrew from the Iran Deal.

In July 2018, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned that Iran would increase its uranium enrichment. “Some European governments expect the Iranian nation to both put up with sanctions and give up its nuclear activities.”

Iran constructed a new factory to create centrifuge rotors last year. French Foreign Minister Jeaan Yves Le Drian warned Iran last year about the plan to increase uranium enrichment.

SWU is a measure for work involved in separating isotopes of uranium, the aim of which, according to an article at the website of Federation of American Scientists, is to increase the concentration of “one or more isotopes… A typical enrichment process consists of a number of centrifuges arranged in the form of a cascade.”

SWUs are expressed in terms of kilograms or metric tonnes, the article notes. According to the text of the Joint Comprehensive. Plan of Action, Iran was supposed to “keep its uranium stockpile under 300 kg of up to 3.67% enriched uranium.”

In July 2018, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the AEOI, said that Iran had constructed an advanced factory during the course of the Iran deal negotiations and that instead of taking another eight years, the factory would be ready in ten months, according to Iran’s Fars News. This raised eye brows last year, but the new announcement goes even further. Iran had asserted in 2014 that it would take eight years to get to the level of 190,000 SWUs. It now claims it might reach that level this year or next year. Compared to other enrichment programs, such as India, the figure is still quite small.

Iran is now expected to unveil new information in March or April claiming to have made “achievements in the mass production of Oxygen 18,” according to Iran’s Press TV.

This is a “major leap,” according to Kamalvandi. He argued that the isotopes developed would have medical applications, avoiding the nuclear arms issue. “Only five countries can produce Oxygen 18,” he said.

Salehi said that researchers at its Khandab site, the Arak heavy water plant, were able to produce oxygen 18 with 97 percent purity at 60kg per year.

After the Iran Deal, Tehran sought to renovate this site according to Iranian accounts. In April of 2017 Iran signed an agreement with China to modernize the heavy water reactor.

Overall the recent Iranian announcements appear aimed at showing that sanctions will not deter them and that they will increase their nuclear capabilities.