ISFAHAN - The first batch of domestically produced uranium yellowcake has been delivered to Isfahan’s Uranium Conversion Facility, an Iranian official announced on Sunday.

The first consignment of yellowcake, the raw material for uranium enrichment, was shipped from the Gachin mine, which is located near Bandar Abbas, under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Islamic Republic has achieved self-sufficiency in producing yellowcake, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters afterwards.
“The West had counted on the possibility that Iran would get into trouble over raw material, but now we have sent the first batch of yellowcake from the Gachin mine to the Isfahan facility,” Salehi stated.
Iran cannot reveal any information about the amount of the consignment, but Tehran will formally notify the IAEA about its yellowcake production, he added.
He also expressed hope that the country would face no problems in providing the nuclear fuel needed for operating its power plants.
Iran will accelerate the exploration for and extraction of uranium ore and its conversion into yellowcake in the near future, he said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Salehi pointed to the recent terrorist attacks on two Iranian scientists and said such crimes cannot hinder the country’s progress.
On November 29, two prominent physicists were targeted by terrorists in two separate bombings. Professor Majid Shahriari was killed and Professor Fereydoun Abbasi Davani was injured in the attacks. The two academics were both on their way to work at Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran when they were attacked. The police say that in both incidents, terrorists riding motorcycles attached magnetic bombs to the physicists’ cars.
Salehi also said Iran will start manufacturing equipment for a complex to produce nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor in the next Iranian calendar year, which begins on March 21, 2011.