30 tons yellow cake was extracted from Saghand Uranium Mine in Ardakan, Yazd province, and then transferred to UFC after processing, milling, crushing, purification and etc.
Back in April, 2018, in a ceremony to mark Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology, President Hassan Rouhani issued an order to transfer yellowcake produced in the Ardakan factory, located in the central province of Yazd, to a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan. The uranium from which the yellowcake was derived was originally extracted from the Saghand mine.
It was then that Iran transferred the first yellowcake cargo from Ardakan mine to Isfahan's uranium conversion facility (UFC).
Since the implementation of nuclear deal in January 2016, Iran has imported around 400 tonnes of yellowcake.
Yellowcake is a type of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fuel fabrication or uranium enrichment.
In February 2017, Tehran and Astana signed a deal, according to which Iran could buy 950 tons of yellowcake from Kazakhstan, which is part of Iran's international nuclear deal known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
"If we receive an order from the Establishment's senior officials to resume uranium enrichment to 20 percent, we only need four days to ramp up 20 percent enrichment at Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant," Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said.
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