VIENNA: UN inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium-enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) chief said in remarks published on Thursday. Mohamed ElBaradei also told the New York Times that 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 in a New York Times interview as saying his inspectors’ initial findings at the fortified site, beneath a desert mountain near the Shiite 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,” said ElBaradei, alluding to Tehran’s references to the site as a fallback for its nuclear program in case its larger Natanz enrichment plant was bombed by a foe like Israel. “It’s a hole in a mountain,” he said.
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 160 kilometers south of Tehran.
Details are expected to be included in the next IAEA report on Iran’s disputed nuclear activity due in mid-November.
The inspectors’ goals were 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 toward making nuclear weapons.
Western diplomats and analysts say the site’s capacity appears too small to fuel a nuclear power station, but big 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 September 21. It said the site, which remains under construction, would enrich uranium only to the low 5-percent purity suitable for power plant fuel.
Uranium 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 (LEU) 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.
Since the October 19-21 talks, Iran has made clear it is loath to ship its LEU abroad due to its strategic value, and favors buying the reactor fuel it needs from foreign suppliers.
Iran has called for more talks but Western diplomats say that Iran’s demands are a non-starter; they do nothing to remove the risk of nuclear proliferation in Iran.
ElBaradei was quoted by The New York Times as saying the problem boiled down to “total distrust on the part of Iran.”
“The issue is timing, whether the uranium goes out and then some time later they get the fuel, as we agreed [tentatively] in Geneva, or whether it only goes at the same time as the fuel is delivered,” he said. – Reuters
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