Iran allows U.N. watchdog access to planned reactor

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran has allowed U.N. nuclear inspectors access to a reactor under construction after blocking visits for a year, and has let them upgrade monitoring at another site ahead of a crucial report on its atomic program.

Iran allowed International Atomic Energy Agency officials to inspect the site of the Arak heavy water reactor last week, diplomats said. The agency has been urging Iran to grant it access to verify it is for peaceful uses only.

Diplomats also said Iran had allowed inspectors to upgrade IAEA monitoring at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant as requested by the agency, which had been finding it hard to keep track of expanding activity.

The IAEA is due to circulate its latest report on Iran next week, ahead of the annual meeting of the IAEA's 150 member states in September.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany are expected to urge Russia and China in talks on September 2 to consider a fourth round of U.N. sanctions on Iran. The latest IAEA report will help form the basis for the discussions.

"We must welcome every effort from Iran because we have been asking them to cooperate with the IAEA and they have not been doing so," one European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

But the diplomat added it was still unclear whether Tehran's concessions were a one-off: "I hope it will be the beginning of a sustainable cooperation and not just one shot before the General Conference."

Western hopes that Iran would negotiate a cap on its nuclear work faded when it crushed unrest over alleged fraud in a June presidential election which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

ARAK "FOR MEDICINE AND AGRICULTURE"

Iran, which says its nuclear program is aimed only at power production and peaceful research, has said the Arak complex will be geared to producing isotopes for medical care and agriculture.

But Western powers fear Iran may configure the reactor to derive plutonium from spent fuel rods as an alternative source of bomb-grade fuel to its Natanz plant, which is under daily IAEA surveillance.

"Inspectors visited (Arak) and did their job," said a senior diplomat familiar with the confidential IAEA inspections.

Inspectors have told the agency that containment and surveillance measures at Natanz, such as cameras and sealing, have been upgraded to the agency's current needs.

The IAEA said in June that the plant was swiftly outgrowing inspectors' ability to monitor it effectively -- namely, to verify that there were no deviations from civilian enrichment.

Some 5,000 centrifuges were enriching uranium then, with 2,400 more being set up on the same underground production floor. The next batch could be refining nuclear fuel full-time by now, with a similar number in line for installation.

Analysts say Tehran has accumulated enough low-enriched uranium for further refinement into the high-enriched form needed for a nuclear bomb. Its output rate has leapt as the number of centrifuge machines has risen eight-fold over the past year.