Iran Nuclear Plant to Start Soon: Russia
Russia will start full operations soon at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, the Persian Gulf nation’s first atomic power station, a senior official said.
“It will happen very soon because everything is practically ready for it,” Nikolai Spassky, deputy head of Rosatom Corp., Russia’s nuclear holding company, told reporters today at the Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France.
Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Aliashgar Soltanieh, in March asked Russia to start Bushehr on time. The head of the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, Hamid-Reza Katouzian, said April 5 that Iran was concerned about delays to the project and that Russia didn’t seem to have the will to cooperate on the launch of the reactor.
Talks between Iran and world powers on its nuclear program have stalled. The country is under four sets of United Nations sanctions because of concern that it is using its atomic facilities to develop weapons. Iran, with the world’s second- largest natural gas reserves, says it’s enriching uranium to fuel nuclear reactors for civilian energy projects.
Russian and Iranian officials held a ceremony to mark the opening of the nuclear plant on Aug. 21. Iran began loading fuel into the reactor in October, a process it said ended about a month later. In November, officials said the country aimed to start the plant by late January. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in late January that the facility would be ready to generate electricity by April 9, adding that safety was of paramount importance.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Meyer in Deauville, France, via the Moscow newsroom +7- hmeyer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net
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