Iran announced on Sunday that it has begun enriching uranium up to 20 per cent using sophisticated centrifuges at its underground Fordo nuclear plant, state TV reported, an escalation that comes amid a standoff with the West over its tattered atomic deal.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, said uranium enriched to 20 per cent was collected for the first time from advanced IR-6 centrifuges on Saturday. He said Iran had informed the UN nuclear watchdog about the development two weeks ago.
Centrifuges are used to spin enriched uranium into higher levels of purity. Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers had called for Fordo to become a research-and-development facility and restricted centrifuges there to non-nuclear uses.
Iran had previously told the IAEA that it was preparing to enrich uranium through a new cascade of 166 advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground Fordo facility.
But it hadn’t revealed the level at which the cascade would be enriching.