Iran is cooperating well with UN nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Sunday.
The IAEA report showed a significant increase in Iran's reported stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) since November to 1,010 kg.
"The (IAEA) has no reason at all to believe that the estimates of LEU produced in the (Natanz) facility were an intentional error by Iran. They are inherent in the early commissioning phases of such a facility when it is not known in advance how it will perform in practice," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
US dialogue with Iran must be limited
Roni Sofer 23/2/09 - ynetnews
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened a secret discussion on the Iranian nuclear threat on Sunday evening following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the matter.
Israel fears Tehran will take advantage of US President Obama's willingness to launch negotiations.
The defence minister Ehud Barak recommended that the US dialogue with Iran be limited for a short period of time, after which United Nations sanctions would be imposed on the Islamic Republic.
Barak only last week, said that "Iran perceives itself as a superpower, its sees all of its nuclear neighbors and views it as a duty to be nuclear as well. There is no doubt that a nuclear weapon in Iran is a threat on any possible world order.”
A Previous IAEA Report on Iran - 26 May 2008 included:
Between 28 January and 16 May 2008, Iran fed a total of approximately 19 kg of UF6 into the 20-machine IR-1 cascade, the single IR-2 centrifuges, the 10-machine IR-2 cascade and the single IR-3 centrifuges at PFEP. All nuclear material at PFEP, as well as the cascade area, remains under Agency containment and surveillance.
The results of the environmental samples taken at FEP and PFEP indicate that the plants have been operated as declared. [4] The samples showed low enriched uranium (with up to 4.0% U-235), natural uranium and depleted uranium (down to 0.4% U-235) particles. Iran declared enrichment levels in FEP of up to 4.7% U-235. Since March 2007, fourteen unannounced inspections have been conducted.
We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.
We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.
Why, in the face of all known facts, is Israel constantly disseminating fear of an Iranian nuclear threat? Perhaps the poor people don’t understand the concept of a fact. Perhaps I can help out here by giving them an example of an actual fact:
Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has no nuclear weapons. Only four recognized sovereign states in the world are not parties to the treaty: India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. All of whom possess nuclear weapons.
Currently Iran is probably the most scrutinized nation on Earth regarding nuclear material. If only the USA were required to be so accountable the world would be a much safer place.
U.S. Energy Department Cannot Account for Nuclear Materials at 15 Locations
By Katherine McIntire Peters - gsn.nti.org
WASHINGTON -- A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records.
Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.
The audit was a follow-up to a 2001 probe that found similar record-keeping problems.
According to Dr. Doug Rokke (US Army Health Physicist & Nuclear Medicine Sciences Officer) 350 tonnes of depleted uranium were dispersed over Iraq in munitions during the first Gulf War alone. Who knows how much was scattered around in and after the 2003 invasion. These munitions weapons, utilized for their ability to penetrate armour and bunkers due to the density of uranium, have also been extensively dispersed throughout Afghanistan.
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