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Monday
Aug162010

Iranian regime announces 10 new uranium enrichment sites

Aggravating U.S., U.K., and Israeli concerns about its potential for manufacturing nuclear weaponry, the Iranian regime has announced it will site 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, in addition to those it already operates. Presumably, the new facilities will enrich uranium to a "low level" of 3 to 5% Uranium-235, for use as reactor fuel. This many uranium enrichment facilities is reported to be necessary to fuel 20,000 megawatts of electricity -- the equivalent of 20 1,000 megawatt-electric atomic reactors. However, enrichment to levels of 20% has also been announced, for use in a nuclear medicine reactor. This would bring Iran's enrichment levels significantly closer to the 90% weapons-grade that its critics fear. As described in Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark's harrowing Nuclear Deception: The Dangerous Relationship Between the United States and Pakistan, the primary source of Iran's uranium enrichment technology is Pakistan's government, military, and A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories, secretly beginning in 1987, long known about -- but not acted upon -- by Western intelligence agencies and governments.