Iran says exporting radiopharmaceuticals to Europe, India

Apr 11, 2021 06:37 UTC

Iran’s nuclear chief has highlighted the country’s achievements in the field of nuclear medicine, saying Iran is now exporting its homegrown radiopharmaceuticals to several countries in the world.

According to Press TV, Ali Akbar Salehi, the Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said India, Lebanon, Iraq, and some European countries are among customers of Iranian radiopharmaceuticals.

In the near future, he said, Iran will turn into a major exporter of radiopharmaceuticals in a wider scale, as the number of Iranian-made radiopharmaceuticals is increasing every year.

Speaking in a televised interview on Saturday marking the National Day of Nuclear Technology, Salehi referred to Lutetium-177 as one of the domestically-developed pharmaceuticals unveiled on Saturday, and said every single dose of Lutetium-177 can cost prostate cancer patients 15,000 euros if they are bought from other countries.

He said Iran is prepared to move forward in the nuclear industry, and is on the verge of industrializing nuclear energy.

“Iran is now competing with Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, and India,” he said, highlighting the country’s design and development of research reactors.

“Based on the law approved by the Parliament, we should prepare and install 1,000 IR-6 centrifuges, and we are working on that… Today we have increased our uranium enrichment capacity to 16,500 SWU, and we are moving forward with slow and calculated steps,” he added.

According to Salehi, Iran currently has 15 types of centrifuges including IR-8, IR-9, IR-S, IR-5, and IR-7 as well as a full cascade of IR-6 which has been launched.

Salehi’s comments came a few hours after the Iranian president unveiled 133 new nuclear achievements made by the country’s experts in different areas of the nuclear industry, including quantum, enrichment, heavy water and deuterium compounds, radiopharmaceuticals, lasers, etc.

In a video conference call earlier in the day, President Hassan Rouhani unveiled the nuclear achievements in the Provinces of Tehran, Markazi, Isfahan, Alborz and Qom to mark the 15th anniversary of the National Nuclear Technology Day.