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Former Nuclear Watchdog: The Iranians "Tricked and Misled Us"

(Der Spiegel-Germany) Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, told Der Spiegel: "Today the facts are as follows: The conversion plant in Isfahan has produced 371 tons of uranium hexafluoride. Some 8,000 centrifuges in Natanz are being used to enrich this raw material. In February 2010, Iran began increasing enrichment to 20%. That's a significant step closer to making an atomic bomb because it takes only a few months to turn that into weapons-grade material. And at the beginning of this year, Fereydoun Abbasi was appointed the head of the atomic energy organization in Tehran....In early June, Abbasi announced that Iran was moving the 20% enrichment of uranium from Natanz to Fordow, where they are tripling production." "What's more, Tehran has announced that it intends to build 10 more enrichment plants, and Iranian experts have conducted experiments with neutron sources and highly explosive detonators that would only make sense for military applications. They're also making progress at the heavy-water reactor in Arak, so much so, that by 2014 they'll have enough plutonium to build an atom bomb." "I am...convinced that Tehran will reach the 'break-out capability' - in other words, the capacity to produce weapons-grade uranium - as early as by the end of next year."
2011-10-07 00:00:00
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