The UN nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence that it has experimented with highly advanced nuclear warhead designs, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iranian scientists may have tested components of the sophisticated technology, known as a “two-point implosion” device, the Guardian reported.
This technology — whose existence is secret in the US and Britain — would allow for the production of smaller and simpler warheads and reduce the diameter of a warhead and make it easier to put on a missile, it said.
The Guardian cited previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the IAEA, drawn in part from reports submitted by Western intelligence agencies, and presented to Iran for response.
An unnamed European advisor on nuclear issues told the newspaper: “It is breathtaking that Iran could be working on this sort of material.”
Meanwhile, UN inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the IAEA chief said in remarks released on Thursday.
In interviews with CNN and the New York Times, Mohamed ElBaradei also said he was examining possible compromises to unblock a draft nuclear cooperation deal between Iran and three major powers that has foundered over Iranian objections.
The nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first detected it, added to Western fears of covert Iranian efforts to develop atom bombs. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for electricity.
ElBaradei was quoted by the New York Times as saying his inspectors’ initial findings at the fortified site beneath a desert mountain near the Shi’ite holy city of Qom were “nothing to be worried about.”
“The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things,” ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran’s references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant were bombed by an enemy.
“It’s a hole in a mountain,” he said. The outgoing IAEA chief told CNN it was intended to be a “passive defense” of its nuclear technology in the event of an attack.
ElBaradei told CNN the agency’s inspectors had received “quite good cooperation” when they visited Qom.
The IAEA has declined to comment on whether the inspectors came across anything surprising or were able to obtain all the documentation and on-site access they had wanted at the remote spot about 160km south of Tehran.
Details are expected to be included in the next IAEA report on Iran’s disputed nuclear activity due in the middle of this month.
The inspectors’ goal was to compare engineering designs to be provided by Iran with the actual look of the facility, interview scientists and other employees, and take soil samples to check for any traces of activity oriented to making bombs.
Western diplomats and analysts say the site’s capacity appears too small to fuel a nuclear power station but enough to yield fissile material for one or two nuclear warheads a year.
The Islamic Republic revealed the plant’s existence to the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog on Sept. 21. It said the site, which remains under construction, would enrich uranium only to the low 5 percent purity suitable for power plant fuel.
Enrichment to the 90 percent threshold provides the fissile material that detonates nuclear weapons.
After talks with Iran and three world powers, ElBaradei drafted a plan for Iran to transfer most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France to turn it into fuel for a Tehran reactor that makes isotopes for cancer treatment.
Russia, France and the US, which would help modernize the reactor’s safety equipment and instrumentation under the deal, see it as a way to reduce Iran’s LEU stockpile below the threshold needed to produce material for a bomb.
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