Reconstruction of Natanz nuclear site to get underway
Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said that reconstruction of the damaged building will get underway at Shahid Ahmadi Roshan Natanz Complex with a bigger plot of land for advanced equipment are supposed to be built there.
Kamalvandi said after the accident happened, our priority was to ensure that there is no casualties, to find the cause of accident and the way to reconstruct the complex and compensate for the losses.
In the first step we found out that there was no casualty but the financial losses were significant.
As the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council announced, the security bodies now are aware of the cause of accident, but, due to security considerations, they do not tend to comment on it.
Elaborating on the characteristics of the accident, he said its construction process started seven years ago and it was about to be completed after two years, but, due to issues related to Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), construction works did not continue.
More samples of advanced centrifuges were supposed to be produced in the same building, he added.
After the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and upon the Supreme Leader order, IAEO planned to produce 190,000 centrifuges (in the framework of the JCPOA), the complex was inaugurated in the presence of reporters on June 6, 2018, Kamalvandi said.
But thanks to JCPOA limitations, the centrifuge manufacturing unit did not work with full capacity, he noted.
There were measuring equipment and precision instruments in the complex and many of them were destroyed by the accident.
Earlier, Rapporteur of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Abolfazl Amouei said on Sunday that the dimensions of the Natanz incident and the report of the IAEA Board of Governors were discussed in the meeting in the presence of Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi.
Meanwhile, Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) spokesman Keyvan Khosravi stated that the cause of the incident at the Shahid Ahmadi Roshan Natanz Nuclear Complex has been identified following the technical and security investigations and will be declared in due course for security reasons.
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