AEOI Plans to Design New Heavy-Water Reactor

A lawmaker said the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is taking the initial steps to design another heavy-water reactor similar to the one near the city of Arak.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Abolfazl Amouei, the spokesman of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said AEOI’s spokesman announced the development in a meeting with members of the panel, which was also attended by the Iranian deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Mohsen Baharvand, ISNA reported. 
Amouei said the implementation of a new law called the “Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Safeguard Interests of Iranian People” was examined during the meeting.
On Dec. 1, Iranian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the action plan, which intends to counteract sanctions imposed on Iran after US President Donald Trump on May 8, 2018, pulled the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The bill became law after Iran’s Guardians Council ratified it a day later.
The law has tasked AEOI with producing and storing at least 120 kilograms of enriched uranium with a 20% purity level every year and enrichment beyond 20% if the country’s peaceful nuclear activities call for it.
It obliged AEOI to optimize and bring into operation a 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor in Arak’s Khondab and to design a new 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor with the aim of producing radioisotopes used in hospitals.

The AEOI Report 

Amouei said during the Sunday meeting, AEOI Spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi had presented a report about the implementation of different articles of the action plan.
“According to the timetable, AEOI will design a reactor similar to Arak’s heavy-water facility before its reconstruction,” he said.
The lawmaker quoted Kamalvandi as saying that AEOI is developing the timetable for designing the new reactor according to Article 5 of the action plan.
“The commission will soon receive a report on the issue,” Amouei said, adding that the installation of IR-2M centrifuge (machines) has started.
Under Article 3 of the law, AEOI is required to start the injection of uranium gas, enrichment and stockpiling of material up to the required purity level, with at least 1,000 advanced second-generation centrifuge machines (IR-2M), within a maximum of three months after the law’s ratification.
On Jan. 4, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani announced that it had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% purity at the Fordow nuclear facility.
Speaking to IRNA, Government Spokesman Ali Rabiei said the president has ordered the launch of 20% enrichment a few days earlier.
“The process of injecting gas [into centrifuges] has started after informing the International Atomic Energy Agency ... and the first UF6 product will be out a few hours from now,” Rabiei said.
Tehran has assured other JCPOA signatories that it will go back to compliance with the deal, as soon as other parties do the same.
Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian deputy foreign minister for political affairs, said recently Iran can resume its nuclear obligations “easily”, if the sanctions are lifted.