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Report: Technical Setbacks Cause Iran to Falter in Push to Enrich Uranium

(Washington Post) Joby Warrick and Glenn Kessler - Iran is experiencing surprising setbacks in its efforts to enrich uranium, according to new assessments that suggest that equipment failures and other difficulties could undermine that nation's plans for dramatically scaling up its nuclear program. A new assessment, based on three years of internal data from UN nuclear inspections, suggests that Iran's mechanical woes are deeper than previously known. At least through the end of 2009, the Natanz plant appears to have performed so poorly that sabotage cannot be ruled out as an explanation, according to a draft study by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The ISIS study showed that more than half of the Natanz plant's 8,700 uranium-enriching centrifuges were idle at the end of last year and that the number of working machines had steadily dropped - from 5,000 in May to just over 3,900 in November. Moreover, output from the nominally functioning machines was about half of what was expected. A separate analysis by the Federation of American Scientists also describes Iran's flagging performance. Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the federation's Strategic Security Program, said, "They are really struggling to reproduce what is literally half-century-old European technology and doing a really bad job of it."
2010-02-11 08:47:42
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