January 22-2016
Iran has announced plans to sell its heavy water surplus to the United States through a third-party intermediary.
Deputy Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Asghar Zarean said six tons of Iran’s exported heavy water will be used by atomic centers and the rest by US scientific institutions. The United States neither confirmed nor denied the story.
“In view of AEOI’s commercialization strategy in production, a recent survey at the US’s Savannah Laboratory [in Georgia] on Iran’s heavy water has confirmed a 99.75 percent purity of the Iranian product,” Zarean said.
“The issue is a manifestation of the compliance with standards and quality of Iran’s nuclear industry,” he said.
Zarean said the enriched uranium exported to Russia last month has also been certified as of high quality by the Russians.
“These recent measures have put Iran in the group of countries capable of producing strategic nuclear materials including UF6 and heavy water,” he said. “Iran produces a total of 20 tons of heavy water per year, the surplus of which is exported to foreign customers.”
Heavy water is produced in Arak. It contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope deuterium and is identified chemically as 2H2O. It looks like ordinary water and is only marginally heavier than ordinary water since 89 percent of water’s molecular weight comes from the single oxygen atom rather than the two hydrogen atoms.
Heavy water is not radioactive. It was first produced in 1932. In 1938, after the discovery of nuclear fission, it was used as a neutron moderator that captured neutrons. Most modern reactors, however, can use ordinary water as the moderator.
