November 25, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 14, 1428

TEHRAN, Nov 24: Iran has produced its own nuclear fuel pellets of uranium oxide for the first time to power its heavy water research reactor currently under construction, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said on Saturday according to the official IRNA news agency.

The announcement represents a major technological step forward as it is the first time the Iranians have said they can turn uranium into the fuel pellets that are inserted into the fuel rods powering nuclear reactors.

“Fuel pellets to be used in the 40-megawatt Arak research reactor (in central Iraq) have been produced,” IRNA quoted Aghazadeh, who heads the country’s Atomic Energy Organisation, as saying on Wednesday.

Iran is also working to produce fuel pellets for its light water reactors such as the one being built with Russian assistance in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast using enriched uranium.

“Nuclear fuel pellets for use in heavy water reactors are produced from uranium oxide, while the pellets for use in light water reactors are produced from enriched uranium, but the technology to produce nuclear fuel pellets are almost the same,” Iranian nuclear scientist Rasoul Sediqi Bonabi told The Associated Press.

Producing enriched uranium fuel pellets is the final stage in a long process that begins with extracting the uranium ore, converting it into a concentrate called yellow cake before it is processed into a gas that then has to be enriched using centrifuges.Former nuclear inspector David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said that — to his knowledge — Iran has produced enriched uranium “on a very small scale and it’s got to be only for testing purposes.”

He said Tehran possessed only about 125 kilograms of the substance, a tiny fraction of what it would take to fuel a power reactor using enriched uranium as its source. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which is probing Iran’s nuclear fuels out of concerns it could be used to make weapons, had no comment.

Aghazadeh said they are already testing the fuel pellets and the fuel rods produced at its nuclear fuel production facilities in Isfahan, central Iran.

Aghazadeh also dismissed any possibilities of slowing down in Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which has already prompted two rounds of sanctions from the UN.

“There has been no change or reconsideration in our plans in Natanz. Work is going on as scheduled,” Aghazadeh said, referring to uranium enrichment facility near Isfahan.

Earlier this month, Iran said it has reached a milestone in its uranium enrichment programme, saying the country now has 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges fully operating at Natanz.The number 3,000 is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment programme that is past the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale programme.

Iran says it plans to expand its enrichment program to up to 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz and is fully within its rights to pursue the enrichment to produce fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The UN nuclear watchdog agency confirmed last week that Iran has installed and fed uranium gas into nearly 3,000 centrifuges, saying the agency verified that Iran had finished installing eighteen 164-machine cascades at Natanz and that UF-6, or uranium gas, had been fed into all 18 cascades.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran had been generally truthful about key aspects of its nuclear history, stymieing U.S. efforts to impose new sanctions against Iran.

Aghazadeh said the IAEA report was “very big victory” because it cleared up suspicions about two decades of Iran’s nuclear activities and the way was now open for compromise.—AP