The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has confirmed that Iran is still complying with the interim nuclear deal, which took effect on January 20. Tehran has not enriched uranium to above the five percent level. It has also diluted half of its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, which could have been further enriched to 90 percent, weapons grade. Iran has also begun commissioning a facility to convert uranium enriched to five percent into oxide powder, which would be difficult to use to fuel a weapon. The following are excerpts from the International Atomic Energy Agency report.
The Agency confirms that since 20 January 2014, Iran has:
i. not enriched uranium above 5% U-235 at any of its declared facilities;
ii. not operated cascades in an interconnected configuration at any of its declared facilities;
iii. completed the dilution – down to an enrichment level of no more than 5% U-235 – of half of the nuclear material that had been in the form of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 on 20 January 2014;
iv. fed 100 kg of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 into the conversion process at the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant (FPFP) for conversion into uranium oxide;
v.had no process line to reconvert uranium oxides back into UF6 at FPFP;
vi. not made “any further advances” to its activities at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) or the Arak reactor (IR-40 Reactor), including the manufacture and testing of fuel for the IR-40 Reactor;
vii. provided an updated Design Information Questionnaire (DIQ) for the IR-40 Reactor and agreed with the Agency on safeguards measures for the reactor;
viii. begun the commissioning of the Enriched UO2 Powder Plant (EUPP) – the facility to be used for the conversion to oxide of the UF6 “newly enriched” up to 5% U-235;
ix. continued its safeguarded enrichment R&D practices at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP), without accumulating enriched uranium;
x. not carried out reprocessing related activities at the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) and the Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production (MIX) Facility or at any of the other facilities to which the Agency has access;
xi. provided information and managed access to the uranium mine and mill at Gchine,
to the Saghand Uranium Mine and the Ardakan Uranium Production Plant;
xii. continued to provide daily access to the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow;
xiii. provided regular managed access to centrifuge assembly workshops, centrifuge rotor production workshops and storage facilities, and provided information thereon; and
xiv. provided, in relation to enhanced monitoring, the following: plans for nuclear facilities and a description of each building on each nuclear site;
-descriptions of the scale of operations being conducted for each location engaged in
specified nuclear activities; and
-information on uranium mines and mills, and on source material.
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