Iran said on Wednesday it has produced more than 17kg of 20 percent enriched uranium, as the nation’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei branded newly imposed sanctions a “confused” act.
“We have so far produced more than 17kg of 20 percent enriched uranium and we can potentially produce 5kg per month,” Iran’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the ISNA news agency.
World powers led by Washington want Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activity which they suspect masks a nuclear weapons drive, and on June 9 backed a UN Security Council resolution for a fourth set of sanctions on Tehran.
Enriched uranium can be used as fuel to power nuclear reactors as well as to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.
Tehran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.
Salehi said Iran was “not in a hurry” to produce 20 percent enriched uranium even if it can process 5kg every month.
“We will adjust the production in a way that the workshop for making the fuel plates is equipped,” he said, referring to fuel made from the 20 percent enriched uranium and used to power a Tehran research reactor.
Iran started producing 20 percent enriched uranium in February on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s orders.
World powers claim that the Islamic republic does not possess the technology required to convert the 20 percent enriched uranium into fuel plates for powering the reactor.
But Salehi said on June 16 that Iran has acquired the necessary technical expertise and by September next year the first batch of fuel plates will be ready.
Ahmadinejad had ordered the refining of uranium to 20 percent after a swap deal aimed at providing nuclear fuel to power the Tehran reactor and drafted by the UN atomic body last October hit deadlock.
That deal envisaged Iran sending its the 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) — to 5 percent purity — to Russia and France for further refining to 20 percent and later to be converted into fuel plates.
The deal hit stalemate when both sides insisted on conditions unacceptable to the other.
Brazil and Turkey brokered a counter proposal in Tehran on May 17 under which Iran would send its LEU to Turkey in return for research reactor fuel to be supplied later.
But the world powers cold-shouldered that proposal and voted through a fourth set of sanctions, which had the effect of further tightening financial and military restrictions on Tehran.
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