JOIN USThe new fuel bank, and one run by Russia that recently went into operation, are meant to strengthen the rationale for nations to seek fuel from outside sources instead of producing it domestically for civilian nuclear reactors.Kazakhstan is the most likely candidate, but the location of the new facility has not yet been formally decided.
Because enrichment can also make fissile warhead material, the fuel banks are considered a way to reduce possible nuclear weapons proliferation by providing guaranteed supply should normal outside sources dry up.
Iran is under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to scrap its enrichment activities.Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors.
But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment programme clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons programme, something Iran denies.
Both facilities are meant to ensure a reliable supply of nuclear fuel in case commercial deliveries are interrupted and both were approved by the IAEA board.But because the repository approved today will be IAEA run, it is meant to provide additional assurances of impartiality to nations worried about access to nuclear fuel in case they are denied commercial supplies for political reasons.
Glyn Davies, the chief US delegate to the IAEA, described approval as "an important step that will protect the rights of all states to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy (while)... moving the world toward a world without nuclear weapons."
Still, while 28 nations voted for establishment of the facility, six of those present abstained. That reflected some concerns among developing nations that such fuel banks could impinge on nations' rights to fully develop civilian nuclear programmes.
And Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the chief delegate to the IAEA of non-board member Iran, called the still to be stocked and operated facility "a new problem, creating obstacles and political tensions among member states."
That was an allusion to Tehran's exclusion because of doubts about the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme