Official: Iran Producing 15 Nano Medicines


Official: Iran Producing 15 Nano Medicines

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Fifteen types of nano medicines are currently produced in Iran, said an official with the atomic energy organization of the country who described peaceful nuclear energy as a great source of power for the nation.

“Such great achievements prove that science is not monopolized by a few countries, and that self-reliance can lead to astonishing successes," Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on Wednesday.

Iran uses the Tehran Research Reactor, a light-water nuclear reactor given to Iran by the US in 1967, to produce radio istotopes for medical and agricultural purposes.

However, when the fuel supplies for the reactor were running low, the western countries refused to sell Iran the 20-percent enriched plates, causing the country to run out of fuel shortly in 2011.

Iran has since stated it would make the fuel itself, despite technical hurdles that prevent all but a few countries in the world today from manufacturing such fuel.

Iran has also a heavy-water research reactor under construction at Arak, in central Iran, which is intended to replace the life-expired Tehran Reactor.

But the Arak reactor emerged as one of several big stumbling blocks in the marathon negotiations between Iran and the G5+1, as the western countries claim that it can be a source of plutonium - one of two materials, along with highly enriched uranium, that can be used for the core of a nuclear weapon.

Reacting to claims made by some western governments that the heavy-water reactor now under construction at Arak will produce plutonium that can be used in a nuclear weapon, head of Iran's atomic energy organization, Ali Akbar Salehi said, "This, too, is one of their big lies, because the plutonium to be produced by Arak reactor is not the type that can be used in manufacturing nuclear weapons and is not fit for that purpose.”

 

 

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