Tehran, Jan 31, IRNA – One of my sweetest moments during the nuclear talks was when the other party resigned to Iran's plan to redesign its heavy-water reactor in Arak instead of dismantling it, says Iran's top nuclear negotiator.

'We decided to keep the reactor and redesign the core,' Abbas Araqchi, who is also the head of Headquarters to Supervise Proper Implementation of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), told a gathering of international deputies of the Iranian universities held at Shahid Beheshti University on Sunday.

'There were times during the talks with G5+1 group of countries that made me feel proud of our scientists,' said Araqchi.

The deputy foreign minister also said that the heavy water produced in our reactor has been tested in high-profile American laboratories and it has been verified as having the highest purity.

'Today even the Americans are demanding for the heavy water produced in Iran,' he said.

Araqchi further said that the other party was insisting that we should dismantle the Arak reactor based on claims that the facility could be used to produce enough plutonium to make a nuclear device.

'But we could not resign to their demands and we were in an impasse,' he said.

'Then the Iranian scientists put forward a plan to redesign the core of the reactor in a way that it would be capable of producing just one kilograms of plutonium annually instead of ten kilograms,' he added.

The Americans believed that the plan could not be implemented but we insisted that it could, said Araqchi.

'And at the end we won and Iran's plan to redesign the Arak reactor was accepted.'

According to Araqchi, two companies from Iran and China are involved in modernizing the reactor in Arak and G5+1 group of countries are also responsible to procure the technical tools and scientifically approve the process.

By IRNA