IRAN has unveiled a new uranium production facility and two extraction mines, only days after talks with world powers on its disputed nuclear program again ended in deadlock.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday hailed the advances and boasted of mastery over "the entire chain of nuclear energy," while demanding that the work be accelerated.
The announcements come after talks between sanctions-hit Iran and six world powers on Tehran's nuclear drive failed to produce a breakthrough in the Kazakh city of Almaty on Friday and Saturday last week.
The mines in Saghand city operate 350 metres underground and are within 120 kilometres of the new yellowcake production facility at Ardakan, a city in the central province of Yazd, state television said.
The report gave few details about the Ardakan facility but said it had an estimated output of 60 tonnes of yellowcake, which is an impure state of uranium oxide later fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Iran says its enrichment activities are aimed at feeding a peaceful energy program.
That work, in defiance of repeated UN Security Council demands, is at the heart of international worries, with Western powers and Israel fearing the Islamic state is developing a capacity to build an atom bomb.
Diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated solution to the standoff have been underway for years, but to no avail.
Iran's latest meeting in Almaty with the P5+1 group of powers - the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany - failed to coax it into curbing its program in exchange for the easing of some sanctions.
Ahmadinejad, under whose presidency the atomic program has expanded rapidly, on Tuesday praised the advances and urged nuclear scientists to step up their work.
"I demand you to speed up your work and without any interruption," he said, while claiming mastery over "the entire chain of nuclear energy, one that no one can take it away".
"In the past, we depended on others to provide us with yellowcake but with the grace of God, (uranium) mines were inaugurated one after another," he said referring to Iran's all but depleted 600 tonnes of yellowcake acquired from South Africa in the 1970s.
Iran says it has now managed to replenish the stockpile from its raw uranium reserve of 4,400 tonnes, according to official figures.
On Tuesday, the state television also reported an electron accelerator was inaugurated on the occasion of Iran's national Atomic Energy Technology day.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday hailed the advances and boasted of mastery over "the entire chain of nuclear energy," while demanding that the work be accelerated.
The announcements come after talks between sanctions-hit Iran and six world powers on Tehran's nuclear drive failed to produce a breakthrough in the Kazakh city of Almaty on Friday and Saturday last week.
The mines in Saghand city operate 350 metres underground and are within 120 kilometres of the new yellowcake production facility at Ardakan, a city in the central province of Yazd, state television said.
The report gave few details about the Ardakan facility but said it had an estimated output of 60 tonnes of yellowcake, which is an impure state of uranium oxide later fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Iran says its enrichment activities are aimed at feeding a peaceful energy program.
That work, in defiance of repeated UN Security Council demands, is at the heart of international worries, with Western powers and Israel fearing the Islamic state is developing a capacity to build an atom bomb.
Diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated solution to the standoff have been underway for years, but to no avail.
Iran's latest meeting in Almaty with the P5+1 group of powers - the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany - failed to coax it into curbing its program in exchange for the easing of some sanctions.
Ahmadinejad, under whose presidency the atomic program has expanded rapidly, on Tuesday praised the advances and urged nuclear scientists to step up their work.
"I demand you to speed up your work and without any interruption," he said, while claiming mastery over "the entire chain of nuclear energy, one that no one can take it away".
"In the past, we depended on others to provide us with yellowcake but with the grace of God, (uranium) mines were inaugurated one after another," he said referring to Iran's all but depleted 600 tonnes of yellowcake acquired from South Africa in the 1970s.
Iran says it has now managed to replenish the stockpile from its raw uranium reserve of 4,400 tonnes, according to official figures.
On Tuesday, the state television also reported an electron accelerator was inaugurated on the occasion of Iran's national Atomic Energy Technology day.
