Fordo enrichment facility to come on stream soon

BANDAR ABBAS, Hormozgan Province, Jan. 8 (MNA) – The subterranean Fordo enrichment facility, located near Qom, will start operating in the near future, the director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) announced on Saturday. “The Fordo facility will be launched soon and will be able to produce 20 percent, 3.5 percent, and 4 percent enriched uranium,” Fereydoun Abbasi said during the opening ceremony of an exhibition displaying the country’s nuclear achievements in the port city of Bandar Abbas, in the southern province of Hormozgan. In August 2011, the AEOI announced that it plans to transfer the production of uranium enriched to a purity level of 20 percent from the Natanz nuclear site to the Fordo enrichment facility under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to triple the production of 20 percent enriched uranium. Iran needs 20 percent enriched uranium to produce nuclear fuel plates for the Tehran research reactor, which produces radioisotopes for cancer treatment. Abbasi also said that the first batch of 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel will be loaded into the core of the Tehran research reactor within a month. On January 1, 2012, scientists and researchers at the AEOI successfully tested the first domestically produced nuclear fuel rod. Iran should convert fuel rods into fuel plates to power the Tehran research reactor. Iranian officials had previously said that the technology for producing nuclear fuel plates does not differ greatly from the technology for producing nuclear fuel rods.