TEHRAN - Behrooz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said on Saturday that Tehran is in talks with a number of countries to sell its heavy water.

However, final decision will be subject to strategic and commercial considerations, Kamalvandi stated.

The IAEO spokesman did not go into details as to which countries the country is to sell the material.

According to the JCPOA, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran is disallowed accumulation of heavy water for a time expansion of 15 years.

Also, under the deal, Iran has to make available for export to the international market any excess heavy water. Iran’s annual heavy water production stands at almost 20 tons.

On Iran selling 32 tons of heavy water to the U.S., Kamalvandi remarked annual excess heavy water will be shipped out to what he called “trustable markets.”

He added, “Those markets in need of the material which put it to good use.”

This is a key question, as according to Kamalvandi, heavy water is a sensitive material, only exportable under international commitments due to security issues.
The U.S. was the first customer of Iran’s heavy water, which was announced for the first time by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The official let slip that 32 tons of heavy water have been “sold” to the U.S. since the nuclear agreement went into effect in January.

The U.S. will spend $8.6 million for the purchase where the country’s Department of Energy will resell the heavy water to commercial and lab facilities in the U.S., including the Oak Ridge National Lab, CNN quoted from an official as saying.

Also, Hamid Ba’eedinejad, the director general for political and international security affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, confirmed signing of an agreement between Iran and U.S. during the two-day expert-level joint JCPOA committee meeting. 
State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau confirmed on Friday the transaction, as well.
“Our purchase of the heavy water means it will instead be used for critically important research in non-nuclear industrial requirements here in the United States. We expect the heavy water to be delivered to the U.S. in the coming week, initially stored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then resold to – at commercially reasonable prices to domestic commercial and research buyers,” State Department website quoted her as saying in a press conference.

She added that this transaction provides U.S. industry with a critical product while also enabling Iran to sell some of its excess heavy water, as contemplated in the JCPOA.

This is the first time that Tehran and Washington pen an agreement relevant to the nuclear industry.
Quality of the heavy water produced by Iran has already been confirmed by some U.S. laboratories including Savannah Laboratory which reported a 99.75 percent purity for the material.

The heavy water deal is a step forward in implementing the JCPOA, laying the ground for more cooperation between the two sides in the future.

AK/PA