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Iran produces new generation of centrifuges
Thank you, President Obama. Also the EU-4 (or is it 3? I can't remember: Britain, France, Germany, and ??) for negotiating so ineffectively for so long, and President Bush for allowing them to do so.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran is involved in the production of a new generation of uranium enrichment centrifuges and plans to use them by March 2011, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization told the semi-official Fars news agency on Friday.

"We are producing new generation of centrifuges named IR3 and IR4 ... We plan to use them by 2011 after eliminating problems and defects," Ali Akbar Salehi told Fars. "We have over 6,000 active centrifuges."

Iran is at odds with the West over its nuclear activities, which the United States and its European allies fear is a cover to build bombs.

Iran, the world's fifth-largest crude oil exporter, says its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more of its gas and oil.

The Islamic republic said in October that it planned to use a new generation of faster centrifuges to enrich uranium at its newly-revealed nuclear site near the central city of Qom.

Nuclear experts say the new model of centrifuges is capable of doubling or tripling the output rate.

In April, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran was testing two kinds of new generation centrifuges.

According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in June, Iran has installed more than 7,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at a plant in Natanz in the central province of Isfahan.


Posted by: Fred 2009-12-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=285961