Cartoon by Emad Hajjaj
‘Accident’ at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant as new uranium enrichment starts
The Guardian: A spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear programme said an “accident” struck the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz nuclear facility, a day after the government announced it was starting up new uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Behrouz Kamalvandi announced the accident on Sunday, saying there were no injuries and no pollution. A mysterious explosion in July 2020 damaged Natanz’s advanced centrifuge facility, with Iran later calling the incident sabotage.
Iran had announced on Saturday that it had started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, in a breach of its undertakings under the 2015 nuclear deal, days after the start of talks on rescuing the accord.
The US had said on Friday that it had offered “very serious” ideas on reviving the hobbled agreement but was waiting for Tehran to reciprocate, something Saturday’s move signally failed to do.
President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated a cascade of 164 IR-6 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium, as well as two test cascades – 30 each of IR-5 and IR-6S models – at Natanz. The ceremony was broadcast by state television.
State TV aired no images of the injection of uranium hexafluoride gas into the cascades, but broadcast a link with engineers at the plant who said they had started the process and showed rows of centrifuges.
Rouhani also launched tests on the “mechanical stability” of its latest-generation IR-9 centrifuges, and remotely opened a centrifuge assembly factory to replace a plant that was badly damaged in last July’s “terrorist” blast.
The IR-9 centrifuge, when operational, would have the ability to separate uranium isotopes more quickly than the current centrifuges being used, thereby enriching uranium at a faster pace.
Under the 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers, Iran is only allowed to use “first-generation” IR-1 centrifuges for production, and to test a limited number of IR-4 and IR-5 devices.
Since January, Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20% purity has grown to 55kg, moving the country closed to weapons-grade levels.
Israel claims Iran still maintains the ambition of developing nuclear weapons, pointing to Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and other research.
Tehran denies it is pursuing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. Iran has blamed Israel for recent attacks, including the explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility as well as another one in November that killed top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Natanz was first targeted in 2007 by a cyber-warfare campaign known as Olympic Games that included the use of the Stuxnet computer virus, which scrambled code and led to the destruction of hundreds of centrifuges, among other damage. Israel and the US were thought to be the architects of the operation >>>
Unless Iran start responding to those terrorist activities in kind, the terrorist will continue to harm Iran.
The shortcoming is squarely on Iran.
Nobody wants to harm Iran. The taget is criminal mullahs, who imposed themselves on Iranian people for last 4 decades. Arabs Palestinian still don't get it that Iranians are the most peaceful, loving, caring people on the face of the earth. We have NO hate against any nation including state of Israel.
On contrary, Mullahs are vicious, vendictive, belligerent and hateful. NO connection between those stinky rag heads and Iranian people.