Iran to continue uranium enrichment, nuke energy chief said

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran will go on enriching uranium "with intensity" and the number of enrichment centrifuges it has operating will rise substantially in the current year, the country's nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on Wednesday, November 28, Reuters reported.

The comments by Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, signaled continued defiance in the face of international demands that Tehran halt enrichment to the higher 20 percent fissile purity level, close down its Fordow enrichment plant, and ship out its stockpile of the material.

But Abbasi-Davani also said Iran would continue and possibly raise its output of reactor fuel using 20 percent enriched uranium, which could allay concerns that a growing stockpile of the higher-grade material could be put to making atom bombs.

Abbasi-Davani did not say whether Iran would increase the work that most worries the West, the higher-grade enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity, as opposed to the lower-grade enrichment to 3.5 percent level needed for nuclear power plants.

Iran says it needs 20 percent refined uranium to turn into fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, and argues its nuclear program has purely peaceful purposes.

Abbasi-Davani said on Wednesday that Iran was continuing its production of fuel to power the Tehran reactor - which uses fuel converted from 20 percent enriched uranium - and could possibly increase its production from two "complexes" of fuel per month to three, according to state news agency IRNA.