Iran tests first nuclear plant

[Neo]

Iran tests first nuclear plant ​

BUSHEHR (February 26 2009): Iran test its long-delayed first nuclear power plant on Wednesday as it presses ahead with its controversial atomic drive despite international sanctions. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Gholam Reza Aghazdeh said the plant in the Gulf port of Bushehr could come on line within the next few months after Russian officials said construction is complete.

Iran is carrying out comprehensive tests of various equipment at the 1,000-megawatt plant which officials said involve "virtual fuel," not nuclear fuel rods. "The construction stage of the nuclear power plant is over, we are now in the pre-commissioning stage, which is a combination of complex procedures," the visiting head of the Russian nuclear agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, told reporters.

Iran's official IRNA news agency had reported on Tuesday that the two countries would announce a date for the plant to go operational during the pre-commissioning ceremony. "As for a timetable, the tests should take between four and six, seven months," Aghazadeh said at a press conference broadcast live on state television.

"And if they go smoothly, then it (the launch of the plant) will be even sooner." Tehran's ambitious nuclear drive has triggered a row with Western governments which suspect it is seeking to covertly build atomic weapons, a charge Iran strongly denies.

Russia took over construction at Bushehr in 1995 but completion of the plant was delayed for a number of reasons, in particular the nuclear stand-off between and Iran and the international community.

 

[Neo]

Can Iran make a nuclear bomb? ​

ALBERT OTTI

ARTICLE (February 26 2009): It's an argument over one figure: With 1,010 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium, does Iran have the capability to make a nuclear weapon? Or is the country still some technical steps away from the bomb, as some nuclear analysts say? After the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its latest report last week on Iran, several media suggested that the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog had determined that Tehran had enough fuel for a bomb.

In fact, the IAEA had simply stated that Iran has enriched 1,010 kilogrammes of uranium hexafluoride to a low level - to analysts such as David Albright at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, this figure means Iran has reached the "break-out capability" to use the material for one weapon.

To do that, Iran would first have to expel or deceive IAEA inspectors, resign from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), enrich the uranium to a higher level needed for weapons, and fashion it into a bomb, Albright and others say.

"At the moment, I'm not very concerned," said Andreas Persbo, a Swedish analyst at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), a London-based think tank.

Given Iran's technical capabilities, it would theoretically take around six months to take all these steps, Persbo estimated, giving the international community or individual countries enough time to react by diplomatic or military means.

"If they really want a nuclear weapon, they need to come up with a time of two months," Persbo said. Iran's position is that it is enriching uranium only to fuel reactors for nuclear power. So far, three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions have not deterred Tehran from continuing this nuclear activity.

If Iran took all the enriched uranium it has and converted it into a single bomb, one would assume that Tehran was willing to take the big risk of ending up with a small and not very effective weapon, said James Acton, a British expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"If Iran were prepared to take high risks, they would have been ready for the last three, five or six months," Acton said from Washington, disputing that it was possible to make a definite statement about Iran's capabilities.

Jeffrey Lewis at the New America Foundation in Washington called it "a mistake" to focus on the breakout scenario. Instead, attention should be paid to the possibility that Iran could build a secret enrichment plant for military purposes, rather than converting the one currently monitored by the IAEA in Natanz.

However, not everyone agrees with the view that 1,010 kilogrammes Iran has amassed through the end of January are not all that significant. The country did not actually have to build a working nuclear weapon to create a threat, Albright said.

"What if they just said they got the bomb?" he asked. "What are you gonna do?" Albright said that this was why the 1,010 kilogrammes meant for Israel that it was losing control over the timing of Iran's nuclear activities. While Iran might have material for just one bomb at present, the amount was continually growing, he said.

 

[Salahadin]

They will be targeted just like Iraq in the name of Weapon of mass Destruction. Even they dont exist they IEA will create them

 

[CrazyEagle9]

Congrates...to Iran...
Every country has right to use nuclear energy.

 

[ajpirzada]

congrats to iran... great achievement

 

[genmirajborgza786]

congarts to iran
himmat e mardan to madat e khudah

Iran warns Obama’s government: “Quit talking like Bush”

February 26th, 2009
Iran warns Obama’s government: “Quit talking like Bush”
Post a comment (18)Posted by: Louis Charbonneau
Tags: Global News, Global News Blog, Italian elections, barack obama, iran, Israel, Nuclear weapons, U.N. Security Council, united nations
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee didn’t attend the latest U.N. Security Council meeting on Iraq. But the moment the 3-hour session was over the Iranian delegation was circulating a strongly worded letter from Khazaee that had a very clear message for the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama: Stop talking like Bush.

He was responding to less than two dozen words on Iran in U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice’s speech to the council during a routine review of U.N. activities in Iraq. Rice said that U.S. policy “will seek an end to Iran’s ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism.”

Those words clearly infuriated the Iranians, who have been toning down their anti-U.S. rhetoric since Obama took over from George W. Bush five weeks ago.

“It is unfortunate that, yet again, we are hearing the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous administration,” Khazaee said in a letter to the council’s current president, Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu.

“Instead of raising allegations against others, the United States had better take concrete and meaningful steps in correcting its past wrong policies and practices vis-a-vis other nations, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Khazaee’s remarks were among the most critical of the new U.S. administration by a senior Iranian official to date.


Is the Obama administration simply repeating the “same tired” language of the Bush administration? The accusations aren’t new, U.N. diplomats say, but the promises of a new approach could herald a radical shift in U.S. policy on Iran.

Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said repeatedly that Washington would use all tools, including direct talks, to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.

Iran has reacted cautiously, saying it’s open to fair talks while demanding fundamental changes in U.S. policy. Western envoys in New York say that not everyone in the Islamic Republic is happy about the outstretched hand of Obama and his promises of change.

Tehran had often criticized the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, which labeled Iran a member of an “axis of evil” with North Korea and pre-war Iraq. It’s harder to criticize Obama at the moment, diplomats say. That could be one of the reasons Khazaee seized the opportunity to attack Rice’s speech to the council.

“The hardliners in Tehran find it easier to have a U.S. administration that turns its back on them,” said a European diplomat. “It’s easier to deal with a ‘Great Satan’. It gives them someone to blame their troubles on.”

It’s nearly three decades since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took a group of U.S. diplomats and officials hostage.

Present-day Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, has repeatedly ruled out a suspension of the country’s uranium enrichment program, prompting the Security Council to impose three rounds of sanctions.

U.N. diplomats say that Obama administration officials have signaled that they do not believe the Iranian nuclear program can be stopped with U.S. or Israeli air strikes. Instead, Obama wants to use a combination of pressure – possibly by imposing further U.N. sanctions – and inducements to persuade the Iranians to halt their enrichment program. The details of the new approach are being worked out in a thorough review of the U.S. policy on Iran, U.S. officials say.

“Will a kindler, gentler U.S. approach work?” asked the European diplomat. “We’ll have to wait and see. Iran’s one of the countries that invented chess and it’s a very good player.”

Post a comment (18) | Share| Trackback

Global News Blog Blog Archive Iran warns Obama?s government: ?Quit talking like Bush? | Blogs |