TEHRAN, 31 August 2005 — Iran has made a new breakthrough in its controversial nuclear program, successfully using biotechnology to extract larger and cheaper quantities of uranium concentrate from its mines, state television reported. Quoting the unnamed manager of the project, state television said on Monday night that “the new technique used for the production of yellowcake will reduce costs, and efficiency will increase one hundred-fold as well.”
Yellowcake, or concentrated uranium oxide, is an early stage of the nuclear fuel cycle which Iran says it needs to master to feed atomic reactors which will generate electricity. But Washington and the European Union fear Iran could use the same techniques to produce bomb-grade fuel and want Tehran to scrap nuclear fuel work for good. Iran has refused and earlier this month resumed work at a facility which converts yellowcake into a gas which can then be enriched to produce reactor fuel or warhead material.
Uranium enrichment itself, however, remains suspended as a confidence building measure aimed at reassuring the world that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran hitherto used acid to turn uranium ore mined in its central desert region into yellowcake. Using biotechnology, the television report said, would be better for the environment. Iranian officials have recently boasted that while some sensitive parts of the atomic program were frozen during the last two years while negotiations were held with the West, Iran’s atomic scientists have been busy perfecting other, less sensitive, parts of the nuclear fuel cycle.
The report on state television said researchers from Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, after six years of research, had mastered the technique of employing microbes to purify uranium ore in mines prior to mining. It said “using biotechnology substantially decreases the cost, increases optimization and prevents environmental contamination” in the process that leads to the production of yellowcake, or concentrated uranium oxide.
The report, quoting a senior researcher, said the microbes were “successfully used in experimental stages” in central Iran’s uranium mines. “This bacteria is very valuable” and makes the production of yellowcake “100 to 200 times cheaper,” he said. The latest development, touted by the television as a “breakthrough,” is likely to reinforce the impression among Iran’s critics that even though Tehran has been forced to suspend certain fuel cycle activities it has continued to make great strides on others.
To make yellowcake, first uranium ore must be mined, then milled and processed in acid. But often mined ore is of a very low concentration and extraction involves expensive and hazardous processes such as roasting and smelting.
In a separate announcement, state television said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had decided to keep on Gholam Reza Aghazadeh as head of the Atomic Energy Organization and one of his seven vice presidents.
The presidential decree called on Aghazadeh to “use scientists, specialists and the young and creative forces in the organization and to materialize the four principles of my government” — which are justice, kindness, serving the people and spiritual and financial elevation.”
