Azerbaijan, Baku, April 9 /Trend S.Isayev, T. Jafarov/
Iran possesses much less of uranium than it says it does, expert on Iran and Middle East, Reza Taghizadeh told Trend.
Taghizadeh was commenting on Iran's recent achievements in the nuclear sphere.
As part of marking the National Nuclear Technology Day, Iran today unveiled the "Saghand" uranium mining complex, and "Rezaei Nejad" uranium oxide producing complex.
Taghizadeh noted that Iran has not had much success in finding uranium in the last 30-40 years, adding that Iran also couldn't find any uranium in its Azarbaijan provinces.
"The are only two well-known mines which Iran has exploited for uranium - one in Natanz, and another one in Bandar Abbas. More digging did not yield any results, so in case with uranium, Iran cannot rely on domestic resources, just like Central Asian countries or Australia," Taghizadeh noted.
The expert underscored that the amount of uranium that Iran has would be enough to keep the Bushehr nuclear plan's reactor running for about 10 years.
"This is while Iran said it plans to build 30 more reactors of the same type," he added. "It simply doesn't have enough of uranium for that many reactors."
Speaking of the "Rezaei Nejad" uranium oxide producing complex, Taghizadeh said that even thought the complex does have a capacity to produce 60 tons of yellow cake, it doesn't mean the plant is actually working full force.
"The plant's declared capacity is 30 tons, and Iran claims it is 60, thus doubling on it capacity. Iran increases these numbers artificially, using political factor - trying to show the world that it can produce nuclear fuel relying on its own sources. However it is far from truth," Taghizadeh explained.
Further on, speaking about the unveiled electron accelerator, that Iran presented at the marking of the National Nuclear Technology Day, Taghizadeh said that while Iran has reached some progress in nano science and techology among other regional countries, it has only been on small scale.
"Iran has not presented anything extraordinary to the the world," Taghizadeh said.