Friday, November 6, 2009

No worries at Iran uranium site: IAEA chief

What? Nothing out of the ordinary? We still get to bomb them, right? Wait, where'd my beer go?

    AFP -

    VIENNA — UN experts found "nothing to be worried about" during their first inspection of a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran, UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday.

    In an interview with the New York Times, International Atomic Energy Agency chief ElBaradei said inspectors had found "nothing to be worried about" at the site, which is being built inside a mountain near the Shiite holy city of Qom.

    "The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things. It?s a hole in a mountain," ElBaradei told the newspaper.

    A team of four IAEA inspectors flew to Iran on October 25 for a first visit of the site, a month after the revelation of its existence had triggered widespread outrage in the West, which suspects Iran is enriching uranium with an ultimate goal of using it to make atomic weapons.

    Tehran strongly denies the charge.

    Iran has already been enriching uranium -- in defiance of three sets of UN sanctions -- for several years at another plant in the central city of Natanz.

    Enriched uranium produces fuel for civilian reactors, but in a highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

    Tehran has said it decided to build the site in Qom as a fallback in case the plant in Natanz plant was bombed by, for example, Israel.

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