IAEA: Iran to ‘Dramatically’ Increase 60-Percent Enriched Uranium Stockpile

Photo Credit: Tehran Times

Uranium enrichment centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility.

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned Friday that Iran is poised to “quite dramatically” increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade enriched uranium.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed deep concern over a notice from Iran last month, informing the nuclear watchdog agency of plans to resume advancing its nuclear program.

“The production capacity is increasing dramatically of the 60 percent inventory,” the IAEA chief told reporters, noting that Iran’s production capacity was set to rise “seven, eight times more, maybe, or even more” than the current monthly production of five to seven kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium.

“I think it is very concerning,” Grossi said. “They were preparing, and they have all of these facilities sort of in abeyance and now they are activating that. So we are going to see. If they really make them turn – all of them – it’s going to be a huge jump.”

From a technical standpoint, the leap from 60 percent enriched uranium to weapons-grade 90 percent purity is a brief, simple step.

The Iranian plan includes feeding uranium into multiple cascades of its advanced IR-2M, IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges.

Cascades are a group of centrifuges that spin uranium gas together to more quickly enrich the uranium. Each of these advanced classes of centrifuges enrich uranium faster than Iran’s baseline IR-1 centrifuges, which have been the workhorse of the country’s atomic program. In the past, Iran has placed approximately 160 centrifuges into a single cascade.

Towards the end of November, the IAEA said Iran planned to begin enriching uranium to near weapons-grade using thousands of the advanced centrifuges at its Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities, both of which are deep underground.

At Fordow alone, the IAEA reported that Iran will enrich more than 34 kilograms of uranium to near weapons-grade per month.

Blinken: Iranian Nuclear Breakout ‘One or Two Weeks Away’

This past July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran already has the ability to produce enough weapons-grade fissile material to create a nuclear weapon in one to two weeks.

“You put those two things together, the fissile material and an explosive device and you have a nuclear weapon, so we’re focused on that,” Blinken said. “What we’ve seen in the last weeks and
months is Iran is actually moving forward with this program.”

Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site

Israeli airstrikes on Iran this past October destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran.

The “Taleghan 2” facility contained sophisticated equipment used to test explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices.

The strikes came in response to a massive Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel.