President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday ordered Iran to ‘go build’ four more nuclear research reactors in addition to the sole one operating in Teheran.
"It has been estimated that four nuclear reactors in four different spots in the country are needed. Go build them, to carry out research activities and provide radio-medicine needed by the country," he said in a speech on state television.
The order came after Ahmadinejad unveiled a number of advances in Iran's controversial nuclear programme that served as a defiant blow to international efforts to rein in its atomic activities.
Iran is currently building one other research reactor, a heavy-water facility in the central city of Arak designed to be more powerful than the ageing Tehran research facility built in 1967 by America.
It also has projects to construct 20 reactors to produce electricity.
Iran's nuclear drive has unsettled the West and Israel, which fear it could include work towards atomic weapons.
Tehran has denied its programme is anything but peaceful.
However the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, said in November it had evidence of tests and computer simulations that strongly suggested a military dimension to Iran's activities.