January 31-2014
IAEA inspectors arrived in Tehran Tuesday to visit Iran’s Gachine uranium mine for the first time in nine years, announced Behruz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
“These three inspectors are scheduled to travel tomorrow to Bandar Abbas province to visit the Gachine mine,” Kamalvandi told the state news agency.
The scope of the visit “will be only to the extent of what they need [to know],” said Kamalvandi, referring to the “managed access” to the mine that Iran pledged to give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Such access was among six parts of a deal reached with the IAEA in November. It hasn’t been made clear who will define what “managed access” consists of and whether the IAEA will be assured of all the access it seeks.
In the first phase of the November agreement, IAEA inspectors visited the heavy water plant at the unfinished Arak reactor on December 8. The IAEA afterward said all the “technical objectives” were met.
Gachine had previously been visited by IAEA inspectors, but in 2005 the Islamic Republic declared it off-limits.
Gachine is one of two mines Iran has opened to provide it with uranium ore. However, by Iran’s own figures, it does not have sufficient uranium ore reserves to fuel for even one year all the power reactors it has announced it will build. Therefore, Iran will remain dependent on uranium imports, thus negating Iran’s declared goal of achieving energy independence by building nuclear power plants.
