VIENNA, Austria - Iran has assembled hundreds of advanced machines in a possible indication that it aims to speed up uranium enrichment - a process that can produce both fuel for power plants and the fissile core of nuclear warheads, diplomats have told The Associated Press. One of the diplomats said more than 300 of the centrifuges have been linked up in two separate units in IranÂ’s underground enrichment plant in the town of Natanz and a third was being assembled. He said the machines appeared to be more advanced than the thousands already set up and running underground, suggesting they could be the sophisticated IR-2 centrifuge that Tehran has recently acknowledged testing.But a senior diplomat said that, while the new work appeared to include advanced centrifuges, they were not IR-2s. He added that it was unclear whether the machines were above or under the surface. The location is significant, since the above ground site at Natanz is for experimental work and the underground facility is the working enrichment plant.
A third diplomat - who like the other two closely follows IranÂ’s nuclear program _ confirmed that Iran had started linking up advanced centrifuges in a configuration used for enrichment. But he said all remained above ground and none of the machines were running.
In any case, the development reflected IranÂ’s determination to push ahead with its enrichment program despite three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions, the most recent imposed last month. One of the diplomats said officials in Tehran would likely detail the new centrifuge work on April 8, a date Iran has designated National Nuclear Technology Day.
In comments to the AP earlier this week, the first diplomat said two linkups or “cascades” of 176 centrifuges each had recently been assembled and a third was in the process of being put together.
The workhorse of IranÂ’s functioning enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge, which can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the P-1s.
The February announcement was the first official confirmation by Tehran after International Atomic Energy Agency officials reported earlier that month that Iran was using 10 of the new IR-2 centrifuges to produce small amounts of enriched material.
Ten centrifuges are too few to produce enriched uranium in the quantities needed for an industrial-scale energy or weapons program and far below the 3,000 older P-1 centrifuges in IranÂ’s underground enrichment plant in the central town of Natanz.