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AFPVIENNA (AFP) - Iran has assembled some 1,300 centrifuges at a key underground nuclear plant and has started to feed them with the uranium gas necessary for enriching uranium, the UN atomic watchdog said Wednesday.
Iran has eight cascades of 164 centrifuges each at a heavily-bunkered underground facility in Natanz and "some UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) is being fed," a diplomat said.
The diplomat was quoting to AFP a confidential document the International Atomic Energy Agency sent Wednesday to the 35 member states of its board of governors.
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VIENNA, Austria - Iran has started enriching small amounts of uranium gas at its underground nuclear plant and is running more than 1,300 of the centrifuges used in the process, according to a U.N. nuclear watchdog document obtained Wednesday.
The confidential document — a letter to Iranian officials from a senior staff member at the International Atomic Energy Agency — also protests an Iranian decision to prevent agency inspectors from visiting the country's heavy water facility that, when built, will produce plutonium.
Enriched uranium and plutonium can both be used for the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
The letter, signed by IAEA deputy director general Olli Heinonen and dated April 18, said Iran has provided information to the agency that it has put into operation 1,312 centrifuges — the machines used to spin the gas into enriched uranium.
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