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Iran Starts Building Isotope Production Centre at Fordow Nuclear Site – Atomic Energy Organisation

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Earlier this day, Mehr news agency reported that Iran inaugurated the construction of an isotope production centre at the Fordow nuclear site near the city of Qom.
Sputnik

The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran has confirmed that Tehran has begun the construction of an isotope production centre at the Fordow nuclear site.

"This centre will produce stable isotopes in various ways, and its operation will begin within the next two years", AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi said as quoted by Iranian state television.

Mehr news agency previously reported about the inauguration ceremony that was attended by Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.

The centre will research methods to produce stable isotopes, including through distillation and heat exchange. These can be used in medicine, industry and science.

The facility is expected to be built by mid-May 2020 and equipped after September of the same year.

Iran was accused of enriching uranium at the underground Fordow facility before signing a deal in 2015 to scale down its nuclear activities.

In its turn, Tehran repeatedly denied that the Fordow facility was intended to produce weapons-grade uranium, saying that it was tasked only with producing low-enriched uranium for power plants.

On 8 May, Iran announced that it was partially discontinuing some of its obligations under the JCPOA, exactly one year after the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal and re-imposed wide-ranging sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

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