Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued on Tuesday the order to launch Shahid Rezaeinejad yellowcake production plant and Saghand uranium mines in Ardakan as well as the country’s first industrial electron accelerator in the city of Taft.

The uranium extracted from Saghand mines in Yazd will be processed and turned into yellowcake in Shahid Rezaeinejad complex, which has the capacity to annually produce 60 tons of yellowcake. The installations in the plant allow extraction of uranium at the depth of 350 meters.

President Ahmadinejad said via video conference in the inauguration ceremony that the country’s nuclear industry is developing and that, every day, the Iranian nation is witnessing new achievements in the field.

Yellowcake is a kind of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores.

In December 2010, the first consignment of indigenous yellowcake was transferred to Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) from Gachin mines under the surveillance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran maintains that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA, it has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.