VIENNA — The U.N. nuclear agency on Friday reported its second unexplained find of uranium particles at a Syrian nuclear site, in a probe launched by suspicions that a remote desert site hit by Israeli warplanes was a nearly finished plutonium-producing reactor.
In a separate report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran continued to expand its uranium enrichment program despite three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to pressure the country into freezing such activities.
And it said the growing pace of enrichment is causing it to review its inspection routine so that it can maintain oversight of the process.
Iran and Syria are under IAEA investigation — Iran since revelations more than six years ago of undeclared nuclear activities that could be used to make weapons, and Syria after Israel bombed a structure in 2006 said by the U.S. to be a reactor built with North Korean help.
But the agency has made little progress for over a year in both cases, and both of the restricted reports Friday essentially confirmed the status quo — stonewalling by both countries of the two IAEA probes.
Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful; Syria denies hiding any nuclear program.
The IAEA’s Iran report reflected continued expansion both in the terms of the equipment in use or being set up and the amount of enriched uranium being turned out by those machines — centrifuges that spin uranium gas into enriched material.
Nearly 5,000 centrifuges were processing uranium gas at Iran’s Natanz facility as of May 31, said the report, while more than 2,000 others were ready for operation. More than nearly 3,000 pounds of low enriched uranium had been produced as of that date, according to the report.
That compares with just over 2,220 pounds mentioned in the last IAEA report in February — an amount that experts and U.S. officials subsequently said was enough to process into weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear warhead.
