Iran eyes 950 tons of uranium from Kazakhstan

TEHRAN: Iran’s nuclear chief said Saturday that the country had requested to buy 950 tons of uranium concentrate from Kazakhstan over the next three years to help develop its civil reactor program.

The request has been made to the body that oversees the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the ISNA news agency that the purchase was supposed to happen “within three years.”

“A total of 650 tons will enter the country in two consignments and 300 tons will enter Iran in the third year,” he said.

Salehi said the final shipment of concentrate, known as yellow cake, would be turned into uranium hexafluoride gas and sold back to Kazakhstan — its first international sale of the compound which is used in the uranium enrichment process.

Under the nuclear deal, many of Iran’s centrifuges were mothballed but it has the right to enrich uranium to a level of 3.5 percent and sell it abroad. Nuclear weapons require uranium enriched to 80 percent or more.

Salehi said Iran has already received around 382 tons of yellow cake, primarily from Russia, since the nuclear deal came into force in January last year.

Under the deal, Iran is allowed to run around 5,000 “IR-1” centrifuges and has been testing more advanced models that can produce greater quantities of enriched uranium — all under the strict supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) On Friday, the IAEA issued a report that indicated Tehran is honoring its end of the deal.

The confidential report said that at under 102 kg, Iran is only at about half of its permitted limit of a form of low-enriched uranium, and is not producing higher grades.

The deal, which came into effect just over a year ago, is focused on limiting Iranian nuclear programs that can be used to make weapons. Tehran insists it has no interest in nuclear arms.