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Iran to commence UO2 production line

Iran Materials 22 October 2013 10:48 (UTC +04:00)
Iran plans to commence a hydroxide of uranium production line, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi said, ISNA news agency reported.
Iran to commence UO2 production line

Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 22 / Trend, D. Khatinoglu, S. Isayev

Iran plans to commence an uranium dioxide (UO2) production line, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi said, ISNA news agency reported.

Salehi went on to say that Iran has reached a point in nuclear science where the country's achievements could be used more effectively and on a large scale for people's needs.

According to Salehi, the production line will be established in a couple of months at Iran's Esfahan UCF (uranium conversion facility).

The Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) at Esfahan contains process lines to convert yellowcake into uranium oxide and uranium hexafluoride. It began operations in June 2006.

According to information provided to the IAEA, Iran carried out most of its experiments in uranium conversion between 1981 and 1993 at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) and at other facilities at Esfahan.

In 1991, Iran contracted to purchase a turn-key, industrial scale conversion facility from China.

This contract was eventually cancelled as a result of U.S. pressure, but Iran retained the design information and built the plant on its own.

Construction of the UCF began in the late 1990s. Iran declared that it began construction of the UCF without building and testing a pilot scale plant. After extensive analysis, the IAEA accepted this declaration.

Following the 2004 suspension agreement between Iran and the European Union, Iran stopped conversion activities at the plant in November 2004. In August 2005, Iran announced that it planned to resume conversion activities, and the IAEA heightened surveillance accordingly.

The UCF consists of several conversion lines, mainly the line for the conversion of yellowcake to UF6. The annual production capacity of the UCF is 200 tonnes of uranium in the form of UF6.

ISIS believes the UCF's enrichment plateaued at this level in 2008. The UF6 is made for the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow.

The UCF is also able to convert yellowcake, LEU, and depleted uranium into uranium oxide and depleted uranium metal. Suspicions remain that the line to produce 19.75 percent uranium metal was originally intended to produce HEU metal for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies. The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions stated that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, using nuclear energy for medical researches instead.

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