U.N. inspectors find higher-level traces of uranium at Iran nuke facility

PanARMENIAN.Net - United Nations nuclear inspectors have found uranium particles refined to a higher-than-expected level at an underground site where Iran has installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges, a U.N. watchdog report said on Friday, May 26, Reuters reported.

It said Tehran had told the U.N. agency that the presence of traces of highly refined uranium - still well below potential nuclear weapons-grade material - "may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator's control".

The United States - which like its Western allies and Israel accuse Iran of seeking to develop atomic bomb capability - said the Iranian explanation could be correct and a leading U.S. expert said he saw nothing "nefarious" in the discovery.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report came a day after six world powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France - failed to convince Iran to halt its most sensitive nuclear work during May 23-24 talks in Baghdad.

At the heart of the dispute is Iran's insistence on a right to enrich uranium and that economic sanctions should be lifted before it shelves activities that could lead to its achieving the ability to assemble nuclear weapons. Western powers insist Tehran must first shut down higher-grade enrichment before sanctions could be eased.

The IAEA report said environmental samples taken in February at Iran's Fordow facility - buried deep beneath rock and soil to protect it from air strikes - showed the presence of particles with enrichment levels of up to 27 percent.

That is above the 20 percent enrichment level Iran has declared at the site, and takes it across the line from low-enriched to high-enriched uranium.

"The Agency is assessing Iran's explanation and has requested further details," the IAEA report said.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "There are a number of possible explanations for this, including the one that the Iranians have provided. We are going to depend on the IAEA to get to the bottom of it."

A diplomat familiar with the issue said a "number" of such particles had been discovered at Fordow and that further samples were taken this month to see whether the find was confirmed.