The Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has begun placing advanced hubs in the new underground facility, which it built near a site destroyed in a mysterious explosion in July
The United Nations' Atomic Energy Agency announced today (Wednesday) that Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at an underground facility it has built near Natanz.
According to the report, Iran has for the first time used a new type of IR-2m centrifuge, a model that is not authorized to operate under the nuclear agreement signed with the powers, which allows Iran to use only the previous generation of centrifuges, model IR-1.
Iran had earlier informed the Atomic Energy Agency that it would transfer three arrays of pine enrichment machines to the underground facility, from the development facility where they were held, after the facility used to develop the new centrifuges was damaged in an explosion in July at the Natanz nuclear facility.
According to a confidential report by the Atomic Energy Agency, received by the Reuters news agency, Iran has installed the uranium enrichment systems in the new underground facility, but has not fed the array with six fluoride sulfur gas, the gas that allows the hubs to enrich the uranium fed to them.
In the West, there are fears that the new centrifuges will allow Iran to produce uranium-enriched enough to build nuclear weapons, despite widespread denial by Iran that the nuclear array it is working on is intended for civilian use only.
Last month, an Iranian opposition group claimed that Tehran was currently building a nuclear weapons facility east of the capital, Tehran.
According to a report that included satellite imagery uncovered by the U.S.-based Iranian Resistance Coalition, the Revolutionary Guards are responsible for building the facility located north of the ballistic missile development complex in Parchin.
