DUBAI: According to the UN nuclear watchdog and Iranian media, Iran has converted a small portion of its high-enriched uranium stockpile into a substance critical to the detection of cancer and other diseases.
For the time being, Iran has decided not to further refine the uranium into weapons-grade levels by converting it. Negotiations over the restoration of Tehran’s nuclear agreement with world powers are currently taking place in Vienna. “Highly Enriched Uranium Targets” (HEUT) have been produced at an Isfahan facility using 60 per cent enriched uranium, according to an IAEA statement on Friday. To produce molybdenum-99, these targets will be irradiated at the Tehran Research Reactor by the IAEA.
A radioactive isotope called technetium-99m, which is used in cancer and heart scans, decays into molybdenum-99 within a few days. Approximately 40,000 medical procedures are performed each day in the United States using technetium-99m in the Energy Department’s estimation. Low-enriched uranium is increasingly being used around the world to produce the isotope in order to avoid the proliferation risks of using highly enriched uranium.
Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency acknowledged that some of this material had been reprocessed, citing anonymous officials it referred to as “informed sources.” An additional 2 kilograms of the substance could help one million people, according to the report. Iran had a stockpile of 33.2 kilograms of 60pc enriched uranium material as of February 19, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This is a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90pc.