This post is from April 2007. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

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How Many Centrifuges?

Paul at Total Wonkerr adds some value to my post, including reminding readers of a late March story from AFP’s Michael Adler stating that a …

… diplomat said Iran had installed six cascades of 164 centrifuges each at Natanz and was test-running four of the cascades.

That would be 1,640 984 centrifuges.

I propose we follow Saeedi’s advice to “wait for the next 20 days when IAEA inspectors present their reports” to get the number, rather than inferring the worst from A-bomb’s bellicose rhetoric.

Update: My mistake, I too quickly read Adler to say that four more were under construction (rather than being test run). I suspect they have one or more cascades under construction beyond the six at the end of last month.

Jeffrey Lewis

Writing on ACW 2004–2026

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His also a non-resident affiliate at Stanford's Center for Security and International Cooperation and a Contributing Editor to Survival.

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