Nuclear facilities in Iran
[6] The possible existence of a nuclear-related facility near Ardakan (also spelled Ardekan or Erdekan) was first reported on 8 July 2003, by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
[clarification needed] Construction resumed in 1995, when Iran signed a contract with Russian company Atomstroyexport to install into the existing Bushehr I building a 915 MWe VVER-1000 pressurized water reactor.
[21] Fordow, near the city of Qom, is the site of an underground uranium enrichment facility at a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base.
[22][23] Existence of the then-unfinished Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) was disclosed to the IAEA by Iran on 21 September 2009,[24] but only after the site became known to Western intelligence services.
Western officials strongly condemned Iran for not disclosing the site earlier; U.S. President Barack Obama said that Fordow had been under U.S.
There is also a Zirconium Production Plant (ZPP) located nearby that produces the necessary ingredients and alloys for nuclear reactors.
[40] According to Reuters, claims by the US that topsoil has been removed and the site had been sanitized could not be verified by IAEA investigators who visited Lavizan: Washington accused Iran of removing a substantial amount of topsoil and rubble from the site and replacing it with a new layer of soil, in what U.S. officials said might have been an attempt to cover clandestine nuclear activity at Lavizan.
Former U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, accused Iran in June of using "the wrecking ball and bulldozer" to sanitize Lavizan prior to the arrival of U.N. inspectors.
But another diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters that on-site inspections of Lavizan produced no proof that any soil had been removed at all.
[41] On 24 January 2015, Iranian dissidents of the National Council of Resistance of Iran claimed a covert uranium enrichment facility, called Lavizan-3, existed just outside Tehran.
[46] NCRI's allegations were made in the weeks before final agreements were reached between Iran and the USA over the JCPOA, which the group opposed.
[49] In July 2020, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran released photos of a building, presumed to be a centrifuge assembly facility, after a recent explosion.
[50] On 28 October 2020, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies released satellite images acknowledging that Iran had begun the construction of an underground plant near its nuclear facility at Natanz.
[52] On 10 April, Iran began injecting uranium hexafluoride gas into advanced IR-6 and IR- 5 centrifuges at Natanz, but on the next day, an accident occurred in the electricity distribution network.
The TRR core lattice is a 9×6 array containing Standard Fuel Elements (SFEs), Control Fuel Elements (CFEs), irradiation boxes (as vertical tubes provided within the core lattice configuration for long term irradiation of samples and radioisotope production) and graphite boxes (as reflectors).
[66] After the Iranian Revolution, the United States cut off the supply of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel for the TRR, which forced the reactor to be shut down for a number of years.
Control of the reactor is accomplished by the insertion or removal of safety and regulating absorber plates, which contain Ag–In–Cd alloy and stainless steel, respectively.
[72] The reactor experimental facilities in the stall end are as follow:[72][73] TRR core cooling is accomplished by gravity flow of pool water at nominal rate of 500 m3/hr through the reactor core, grid plate, plenum and into the hold-up tank from where it is pumped through the shell of the heat exchanger and then back into the pool.
[74] TRR offers a variety of education and exposure services and production of radioisotopes for medical, scientific and industrial centers.
One of the primary objectives of the facility is to render services to scientists, engineers and graduate students in nuclear techniques.
Yazd Radiation Processing Center, established in 1998 by AEOI,[75] is equipped with a Rhodotron TT200 accelerator, made by IBA, Belgium, with outputs of 5 and 10MeV beam lines and a maximum power of 100 kW.
As of 2006[update] the centre is engaged in geophysical research to analyze the mineral deposits surrounding the city and was expected to play an important role in supporting the medical and polymer industries.
