LOC21:24
18:24 GMT
TEHRAN, April 19 (KUNA) -- Iran has completed downgrading enriched uranium from 20 to five percent, the Islamic Republic's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Saturday.
"Iran has completed on April 12 the downgrade of 103 kilograms of its stocks of enriched uranium from 20 percent to five percent," Salehi, head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said in an interview with Iranian Al-Alam news channel.
He said Iran proposed for the P5+1 group the increase of number of cetrifuges to produce 30 tons of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor. "This proposal is still being discussed," he added.
Iran, said Salehi, also proposed maintaining the current number of centifuges, 20,000, for four or five years.
On Arak heavy-water reactor, Salehi said the P5+1 group approved an Iranian suggestion to redesign the reactor "and the issue is almost finalized.
"The Iranian proposal over Arak reactor does not affect the production of isotopes and only decrease the production of plotonium to one-fifth," said the former Foreign Minister.
Some of the P5+1 group - the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany - proposed construction of a light water reactor, said Salehi, who explained that light-water reactors used for production of electricity while heavy-water ones produced isotopes.
Meanwhile, Salehi said the recent reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over Iran's nuclear program "are more balanced that previous ones."
Salehi said the Vienna-based IAEA should not rely on unofficial information regarding Iran's nuclear program. He said the IAEA inspectors visited the Parchin facility twice and did not find any unusual matter. "But they receive false information and thus want to visit this facility again. This pattern should not continue and we don't see any justification for visiting the site for the third time.
"... We have no problem with inspection but we want a logical evidence ... of the atomic agency to carry out this mission," he said. (end)
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