The Associated Press, WASHINGTON – A private Washington institution dedicated to lessening the global threat of nuclear weapons released a satellite photograph Friday that it said shows extensive new construction at a newly restarted nuclear plant in Iran.
The photo of the plant at Natanz was taken Jan. 2 and depicts seven buildings under construction that have appeared in the last year, said Corey Hinderstein, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security.
The site at Natanz, 220 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Tehran in central Iran, includes Iran’s main fuel enrichment plant where Iranian technicians removed seals Tuesday that had been installed by International Atomic Energy Agency. It also resumed research on nuclear fuel, which included small-scale enrichment.
Byproducts of the enrichment process can be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The United States and Britain, France and Germany, who have been trying for two years to negotiate Iran out of the enrichment business, think the Islamic republic’s nuclear program is aimed at creating nuclear arms. Iran insists it wants nuclear technology only for electric power production.
Hinderstein said the photograph released Friday does nothing to solve that dispute.
"When we release the photo, it’s not to draw conclusions about what (the facility) is to be used for," she said. "There is nothing about this facility from inside or outside that indicates it is for a nuclear weapons program."
The equipment is the same for both civilian and military uses, Hinderstein said. The key, she said "is just how it is used."
According to the photograph’s caption, it shows the location of underground centrifuge cascade halls for the fuel enrichment plant, designed to hold about 50,000 centrifuges for installation in modules of 3,000 centrifuges each.
Also visible is the pilot fuel enrichment plant, one location where IAEA seals were removed. The function of the seals was to enforce a suspension of activities involved in uranium enrichment.