Iran has begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas feedstock into the advanced IR-2m uranium-enriching centrifuges installed at its underground plant at Natanz.
According to a UN nuclear watchdog report, the move is the latest breach by Iran of its nuclear deal with major powers.
A previous International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran had installed IR-2m machines underground.
Breach of 2015 deal
The deal states that Iran can only accumulate enriched uranium with first-generation IR-1 machines and that those are the only centrifuges it can operate at its underground plant at Natanz, apparently built to withstand aerial bombardment.
An International Atomic Energy Agency report last week showed Tehran had installed a cascade, an interlinked cluster, of advanced IR-2m machines underground at Natanz, having moved them from an above-ground plant where it was already enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges in breach of the deal.
Last week’s report said it had not fed uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, the feedstock for centrifuges, into that cascade.
“On 14 November 2020, the Agency verified that Iran began feeding UF6 into the recently installed cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant in Natanz,” the IAEA report to member states dated Tuesday said.
