Iran Takes Giant Step Toward Nuclear Self-Sufficiency With Homegrown Cesium-137

The Islamic Republic has spent decades pursuing peaceful nuclear energy as a means to ensuring its long-term energy independence. The US and its allies have leveled sanctions against the country over its nuclear program, claiming Tehran secretly wants to build a nuclear bomb. Iran says weapons of mass destruction are against the tenants of Islam.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) reported a major domestic breakthrough in the country’s nuclear energy program on Sunday, unveiling Cesium-137, a radionuclide used in a variety of medical and industrial applications, produced by Iranian nuclear scientists for the first time ever.

Speaking at an exhibition in Tehran where the Iranian-made Cesium-137 was unveiled, AEOI chief Mohammad Eslami stressed that the breakthrough was a sign of the progress made by Iran’s nuclear industry, notwithstanding Western pressure.

"Our enemies were and are against Iran’s nuclear industry, but they all should know that the nuclear industry is a strategic industry," Eslami said. The country is now capable of designing, building and maintaining nuclear reactors, and can rely on domestic resources and ingenuity in the nuclear fuel cycle, he noted.

Eslami said Iran’s Cesium-137 breakthrough will prove useful for applications ranging from industrial instrumentation systems to the oil and gas sector. Iran's scientists spent six months developing the technology to make the isotope, he added.

Indeed, Cesium-137, produced as a byproduct of nuclear fission processes, is used in miniscule amounts in a wide array of areas, from radiation detection equipment such as Geiger and Mueller counters to medical radiation therapy devices, industrial gauges, flow meters, calibration equipment, and industrial radiography. It can also be used to expose food, cosmetics and other consumer products to small amounts of ionizing radiation to kill pests or other potentially harmful microorganisms.

Cesium-137 is rare, and isn't cheap, with tiny ampules containing less than 75 kBq (or about 2 microcuries) going for about $1,000 apiece, for example. Cesium-137 isotopes have a half-life of up to 30 years, six times that of Cobalt-60 – another popular isotope used for industrial radiography and medical applications.

Iranian Nuclear Program

Iran dramatically ramped up its uranium enrichment and stockpiling activities starting in 2019, exactly one year after the 2018 breakdown of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the agreement. The JCPOA placed tough restrictions on the country’s peaceful nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US and European sanctions.

The Biden administration restarted indirect negotiations with Iran on reactivating the nuclear deal in 2021, but the talks stalled amid US efforts to place additional conditions into the pact, and Washington’s refusal to lift a terror designation against Iran's terrorism-fighting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran’s nuclear activities have prompted top US Middle East ally Israel to claim that Tehran is amassing materials to build a nuclear bomb – a claim Tel Aviv has repeated ad nauseam for more than a decade. Israel has complemented claims about Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions with threats to bomb the nation’s nuclear facilities, independently or in coordination with the US military.

The Islamic Republic denies having any ambitions to pursue nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction, citing fatwas – or religious rulings, issued by its Supreme Leaders deeming such arms to be against the tenants of Islamic. Iran lived up to its word on WMDs in the mid-1990s, when it destroyed its stocks of chemical weapons and joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. The country also never used its chemical arsenal during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, despite having the legal right to do so under international law due to repeated Iraqi attacks against Iranian troops and cities.