AEOI Chief: Iran shows new generation of centrifuges to IAEA

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereidoun Abbasi announced that Tehran has shown the new generation of its home-made centrifuge machines to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "We showed these centrifuges to (IAEA Director-General Yukiya) Amano's deputy in a bid to demonstrate the ability of Iranian scientists," Abbasi said at a meeting on Iran's nuclear achievements in the country's Southern port city of Bandar Abbas. In April 2010, the AEOI officials had announced that Iranian scientists have managed to design the first sample of the third generation of home-made centrifuges. "Our skillful colleagues at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran have succeeded in designing third-generation machines thanks to God," former head of the AEOI Ali Akbar Salehi declared at the time. "The (third-generation) machines have accomplished their mechanical tests. We expect that God willing the machines would show the separation capacity of approximately 10 after the upcoming phase of gas injection," the official stressed at the time. "That capacity is almost 6 times more than the separation capacity in the first generation machines," Salehi continued. Experts speculate that the new generations of Iran-made centrifuges would enable Tehran to enrich uranium over the current purity level of 5 percent. Uranium enriched to the purity levels between 3.5 and 5 percent is used for fueling nuclear power plants, while 20-percent enriched uranium is used in the production of radioisotopes for medicinal use. Production of nuclear bombs needs highly-enriched (over 90 percent) uranium. In June 2011, Abbasi announced that the country's experts have managed to produce a new generation of centrifuge machines with a higher quality, adding that the first cascade of these machines will be installed in Iran's nuclear facilities soon. "We are working on a new generation of centrifuges and we have ended the phase of research," Abbasi told reporters at the time. "We will install the first 164-set cascade of the new generation centrifuges soon" and will make them operational after attaining the desired results, he added.