AEOI Chief: Iran’s N. Industry Continues Advancement

According to ashoora reporting from Fars news:

“At present, everything in the nuclear industry is making advancement. One of the goals of the nuclear industry is building nuclear power plants and we have developed two new power plants in the past two or three years,” Salehi said in an interview with the Persian-language Entekhab news website on Monday.

“In area of discovery and exploitation, we used to produce an average sum of 4 tons of uranium, but we will reach a 40-ton capacity this year. We produced 30 tons for two years and this year we produce 40 tons,” he added.

Elsewhere, Salehi referred to the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, and said, “Mutual trust has been fully destroyed between Iran and the US. In my view, trust can be destroyed very fast but building trust is difficult.”

In relevant remarks in September, Salehi underlined that the country’s experts are able to enrich other elements of the Periodic Table than uranium.

“We have taken long strides in production of stable isotopes,” Salehi said, addressing a ceremony at Fordo nuclear site in Central Iran.

“In addition to the project to enrich uranium, we can enrich other elements too. A number of Mendeleev (Periodic) Table’s elements have nearly 256 stable isotopes. Stable isotopes have extensive applications in the fields of industry, hygiene, agriculture, cultural heritage and archeology,” he added.

 “We are currently using IR1 centrifuges to enrich stable isotopes, including tellurium and xenon, in a pilot form, and we intend to take this to the industrial level,” Salehi said.