Iran Puts Uranium Gas in Centrifuges

[jpak]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jHz-Bz3Pa0Ivga_oNIvTbrBoIN7QD8UPKV600

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Iran's new generation of advanced centrifuges have begun processing small quantities of the gas that can be used to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads, diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The diplomats emphasized that the centrifuges were working with minute amounts of the uranium gas. One diplomat said Tehran has set up only 10 of the machines — far too few to make enriched uranium in the quantities needed for an industrial-scale energy or weapons program.

The statements shed light on the Islamic Republic's experiments with its domestically developed IR-2 centrifuges, which can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the older machines that now form the backbone of Tehran's nuclear project.

The existence of the IR-2 centrifuges was made known last week by diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency probing Iran's nuclear program for suspicions it may have been designed to make weapons.

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