News - Middle East - Iran: A senior Iranian lawmaker says the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) is taking the initial steps to design another heavy-water reactor similar to an existing one in the city of Arak.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Abolfazl Amouei, the spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said the AEOI’s spokesman had announced the matter in a meeting with members of the committee also attended by the Iranian deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Mohsen Baharvand.

Amouei said the implementation of a new law called the “Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Safeguard Interests of Iranian People” was examined during the meeting.

On December 1, Iranian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the action plan, which intends to counteract sanctions imposed on Iran after President Donald Trump on May 8, 2018 pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. The bill became law after Iran’s Guardian Council ratified it a day later.

According to the new law, the Iranian administration is required to suspend more commitments under the nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was inked by Iran and six world powers on July 14 that year.

The law tasked the AEOI with producing and restoring at least 120 kilograms of enriched uranium with a 20-percent purity level every year and also enrichment beyond 20 percent if the country’s peaceful nuclear activities demanded.

It required the AEOI to optimize and bring into operation a 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor in Arak’s Khondab and to design a new 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor within a timetable with the aim of producing the radioisotopes used in hospitals.

Source: Press TV