Good News about Iran’s IR40 Reactor Coming Soon: Official

In remarks released on Sunday, Seyed Ali Asghar Zare’an pointed to the process of redesigning the IR40 reactor, also known as Arak heavy water reactor, and highlighted its technical advantages over the previous reactor.

 “The conceptual, basic and detailed design of this reactor has been completed and we have entered the phase of construction and provision of equipment,” he noted.

“God willing, in the near future good news will be released to the public about this project, which will certainly get global attention,” the official went on to say.

The remarks came after Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi on Saturday announced details of the country’s “third step” in reducing commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Back in July, Iran had declared the second step to reduce its commitments by ramping up the level of uranium enrichment to over 3.67 percent.

Iran maintains that the new measures are not designed to harm the nuclear deal but to save the accord by creating a balance in the commitments.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, US, Britain, France, and Germany) on July 14, 2015, reached a conclusion over the text of the JCPOA.

The accord took effect in January 2016 and was supposed to terminate all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran all at once, but its implementation was hampered by the US policies and its eventual withdrawal from the deal.

On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the nuclear accord.

Following the US withdrawal, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the deal.

However, the EU’s failure to ensure Iran’s economic interests forced Tehran to stop honoring certain commitments, including an unlimited rise in the stockpile of enriched uranium.

Kamalvandi recently said that the country’s enriched uranium stockpile has reached 360 to 370 kilograms.