Iran is continuing to accelerate its nuclear program, announcing on Tuesday that it will be rolling out 1,000 additional centrifuges, The Washington Times reports.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s nuclear agency who made the announcement, also said his country had increased its supply of yellowcake, a uranium concentrate powder that is used for enrichment.
“One thousand centrifuges are being installed inside the country,” Salehi was quoted as having said. “We are currently installing 1,000 IR-2m centrifuges, but two cascades are installed and working.”
“Until three or four years ago, we used to produce an average of four to five tons of yellowcake, but for the past two years, we have increased the production of yellowcake to 30 tons,” Salehi continued. “This year, the production of yellowcake will be between 35 and 40 tons, which means that we have 8-folded the production of yellowcake.”
The announcement comes just one day after Iran officially announced that it had resumed enrichment of uranium at its underground site in Fordow, in the latest violation of the deal it signed with world powers in 2015.
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently released a report which found that Iran has fired up advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges that it had installed at its Natanz site in violation of the 2015 agreement.
In a previous report, the UN agency revealed that the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of enriched uranium now stands at more than ten times the limit set down in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
