Iran needs fuel for reactor

2010-02-08 20:07

Simon Morgan

Vienna - Iran has the technology to make good on its plan to produce higher enriched uranium, but not to take the critical step of turning it into fuel rods for nuclear reactors, according to analysts.

The Islamic republic says it urgently needs the fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that makes radio-isotopes for medical purposes such as cancer treatment.

But it has so far been reluctant to enter into a UN-brokered deal which would require it to ship its own stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia for further processing.

Western countries insist Iran do so to prove that its nuclear drive is entirely peaceful as Tehran has long claimed.

However Tehran sees such a deal as a ruse by the West to confiscate its stockpiled uranium and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now ordered the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation to start enriching the uranium to 20% on its own.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner suggested Iran does not have the capacity to enrich uranium to 20% for use in its research reactor and he accused the Islamic republic of "blackmail".

The Iranians "do not know how to make fuel" for their existing medical reactor, he told reporters.

"For what purposes do they want to enrich it to 20%?"

Nevertheless, experts say the process of enrichment is essentially the same, no matter what level of refinement is required and Iran's plant in Natanz is already churning out low-enriched uranium.

- SAPA