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July 11th - - Reuters - Technical Woes Slow Iran Atom Fuel Drive: Diplomats

Mark Fitzpatrick, analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, also said Iran’s enrichment program had bogged down, quoting reliable diplomatic sources.
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11 July 2006: Reuters
 
By MARK HEINRICH, REUTERS, VIENNA
 
Technical glitches appear to have slowed down Iran’s nuclear fuel-enrichment program and put on hold plans to expand it, diplomats said on July 11.
 
Iran, meanwhile, held talks with the European Union on an offer of incentives to stop it from enriching uranium and defuse a crisis over suspicions that Tehran’s professed civilian nuclear energy drive is a camouflaged atom bomb project. The July 11 talks ended with no clear sign of a result.
 
In April, Iran enriched raw uranium to the level needed to fuel nuclear power plants for the first time, but far short of the threshold suitable for a warhead. It began a second round of feeding uranium into centrifuge enrichment machines on June 6.
 
But since then, some Western diplomats in Vienna accredited to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said technical problems had apparently beset Iran’s cascade of 164 enriched interconnected centrifuges at its Natanz pilot plant, impeding production.
 
"We have been told of problems from people in a position to know. It’s a slowdown in the process although we haven’t been able to quantify it yet," said one diplomat, who like others asked for anonymity due to the topic’s political sensitivity.
 
"We have heard ... that plans for a second and third cascade of 164 are on hold and that the attrition rate in the first cascade is relatively high," another diplomat told Reuters.
 
The first diplomat said unconfirmed reports were circulating that the first cascade, basis for Iranian plans to install 3,000 centrifuges by 2007, had a "failure rate of up to 50 percent."
 
He said the centrifuges seemed to be showing fragility after being spun at supersonic speeds for most of the past few months, and the nature of materials injected into them -- which could involve impurities in the uranium -- could be damaging too.
 
"The reasons for the delays are definitely not political, that is, it’s not like it’s an Iranian goodwill signal as they go into negotiations with the EU," he said.
 
Mark Fitzpatrick, analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, also said Iran’s enrichment program had bogged down, quoting reliable diplomatic sources.
 
IRANIANS MUM
 
Asked about the disclosures, Iranian officials at the Brussels talks between chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana declined comment.
 
Officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency had no comment, citing confidentiality that prevails between periodic reports by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Iranian nuclear work.
 
A senior IAEA diplomat did not confirm or deny that Iranian progress with uranium enrichment was faltering.
"It’s hard to make a judgment like this because Iran had not given the agency a schedule of what it intended to do regarding the (current round of enrichment)," he said.
 
Centrifuges are prone to breakdown from excessive vibration or pressure and temperature oscillations. Iran would likely have to run thousands of centrifuges for months or years non-stop to prove it could enrich uranium in significant quantities.
 
Serious problems in mastering enrichment technology could diminish the sense of urgency over Iran’s case cultivated by its arch-foe the United States, but questioned by Russia and China which oppose sanctions options mooted by Washington.
 
The United States and EU allies regard Iranian nuclear activity as an imminent threat to international peace, pointing to Tehran’s past cover-up of enrichment research from the IAEA and repeated calls for the destruction of Israel.
 
ElBaradei has assessed Iran poses no immediate danger. He said last week world powers had ample time to solve the crisis diplomatically.