The head of the Iranian organization of atomic energy has justified this production by the absence of donation of this fuel by the Westerners.
Le Monde with AFP
Tehran has taken a new threshold by increasing to more than 120 kg its inventory of 20% enriched uranium, announced on Saturday, October 9, Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Iranian organization of atomic energy .
“We have exceeded 120 kg. We have more than this figure. Our people know that they [Westerners] were supposed to give us the 50% enriched fuel to use in the Tehran reactor, but they do not did not do it, “said Mohammad Eslami on state television. If our colleagues did not produce it, we would naturally have problems with the lack of fuel for this reactor.”
According to estimates at the end of August, Tehran had increased to 84.3 kg its inventory of 20% enriched uranium, a level that allows the theory of producing medical isotopes, in particular in the diagnosis of certain cancers. Then in April, the Islamic Republic crossed the unpublished threshold of 60% and produced since 10 kg, approximating 90% necessary to make a bomb.
mentioning the “Breakout Time”, that is to say the time it would need in theory to Iran to obtain the material for a nuclear bomb, a senior official of the US administration had estimated, Monday, that it was “past twelve months to a few months”, which is “disturbing”.
Sanctions imposed
concluded in 2015 between Iran on the one hand, and the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, France and Germany on the other hand, the Iranian Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) offered to Tehran the lifting of a portion of the international sanctions in exchange for a drastic reduction of its nuclear program, placed under the strict control of the United Nations.
But after the unilateral withdrawal of the Americans of the agreement, in 2018, under the chairmanship of Donald Trump, Tehran gradually abandoned his commitments. The United States has in return imposed sanctions.
Washington says he wants to “come back quite quickly” at the Table of Negotiations with Iran to revive the Nuclear Agreement, said a few days ago a senior official of the Biden administration. Tehran goes in the same direction, considering a recovery before the beginning of November of the negotiations with the great powers for a revival of the agreement on the nuclear, suspended since June.