Iran vastly expanding centrifuges at Fordo; can be reconfigured to make weapons grade uranium in days
Al-Arabiya reports that ahead of the arrival of nuclear inspectors on Sunday, Iran is greatly expanding the number of centrifuges at its Fordo underground facility near the 'holy' city of Qom. According to the report, the centrifuges can be upgraded to allow them to make weapons grade uranium in a matter of days (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News). While saying that the electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges was now in place, the diplomats emphasized that Tehran had not started installing the new machines at its Fordo facility and could not say whether it was planning to.And Obama wants to start negotiating with Iran again now? What could go wrong?
Still, the senior diplomats - who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged - suggested that Tehran would have little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them. They spoke in recent interviews - the last one Saturday.
The reported work at Fordo appeared to reflect Iran’s determination to forge ahead with nuclear activity that could be used to make atomic arms despite rapidly escalating international sanctions and the latent threat of an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities.
Fordo could be used to make fissile warhead material even without such an upgrade, the diplomats said.
They said that although older than Iran’s new generation machines, the centrifuges now operating there can be reconfigured within days to make such material because they already are enriching to 20 percent - a level that can be boosted quickly to weapons-grade quality.
Their comments appeared to represent the first time anyone had quantified the time it would take to reconfigure the Fordo centrifuges into machines making weapons-grade material.
In contrast, Iran’s older enrichment site at Natanz is producing uranium at 3.4 percent, a level normally used to power reactors. While that too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, reassembling from low to weapons-grade production is complex, and retooling the thousands of centrifuges at Natanz would likely take weeks.
Labels: enriched uranium, Iranian nuclear threat, Qom
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:25 AM
2 Comments:
yah, and that's the older generation machines--meanwhile the O team's rationale for not worrying--there is no plan to build a nuke, and the Iranians "rational", or fall-back peddled by O-team advisor Zakaria: ok, the sanctions fail and they get "one or two crude devices"; no biggie, containment works and on and on--all of this combines to a pretext for abandoning sanctions and letting the Iranians get on with their nuclear weapons, screw Israel. Or who knows, trading Israeli nuclear capacity for Iranian promises of transparency. Or trading Israel and American capacity...with O you never know when he is prepared to pull off his American hat and put on the World Savior Internationale cap.
But this old pooch doesn't believe BIbi & Barak have an attack plan they are prepared to go with so all of this is somewhat in smoke and mirrors land....
In addition to the negotiations, it's the reduction of US nukes that Obama wants to bring to fruition. Is he suicidal?
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