Iran has started enriching uranium in a second network of centrifuges, Iran's student news agency ISNA reported today, expanding a programme which the West fears is intended to make nuclear bombs.
ISNA quoted an "informed source" as saying "the injection of gas was carried out" in the past week. "We have obtained the product of the second cascade," the source said.
Uranium UF-6 gas is injected into cylindrical centrifuges which spin at supersonic speeds to produce enriched material. The process can make fuel for power plants or material for atomic bombs.
Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, says the aim of its nuclear programme is to meet energy needs. But it has failed to convince world powers, who are threatening U.N. sanctions after Tehran failed to heed a U.N. demand to halt enrichment work.
"This is increasing the worries of the international community about the growth of Iran's capacity to produce fissile material," French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters in Paris in response to the news.
"The priority is to move towards the negotiation of a Security Council resolution," he added.
A British Foreign Office spokesman said it was a matter for the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog body, to investigate.
Another British government source said: "The fact that they've now started to feed stuff through the centrifuge isn't going to shock anyone. But it will demonstrate further Iranian intransigence and that will all be taken in the round."
Diplomats said this week Iran had started "dry testing" a network of 164 centrifuges, known as cascades, to go with an original network that yielded Iran's first batch of enriched uranium suitable for power plant fuel.
The first cascade of centrifuges produced a tiny amount of low-enriched uranium in April.
Western intelligence experts estimate Iran remains three to 10 years away from an industrial-scale operation of thousands of centrifuges that could yield enough fuel for nuclear bombs.