TEHRAN, 31 December 2007 — Iran yesterday insisted its first nuclear power station would be launched in the summer of 2008, despite the plant’s Russian constructors saying it will not go on line until the end of the year.
“The Bushehr nuclear power station will launch at a capacity of 50 percent next summer,” said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.
A Russian contractor is finishing the construction of the much-delayed 1,000-megawatt plant in the southern city of Bushehr.
Moscow has also agreed to deliver the nuclear fuel required by the facility. A spokeswoman for the Russian contractor Atomstroiexport said earlier this month that it would take at least a year to launch the power station. “We can predict that the Bushehr station will be launched no earlier than the end of 2008 due to the current situation,” Irina Yesipova said on Dec. 20.
The Bushehr project has suffered a series of delays since it was started in the 1970s under the ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi using engineers from German engineering firm Siemens.
It was shelved in the first decade after the 1979 Revolution but then resurrected in 1995 when Russia agreed to build and fuel the plant. Even then the deadline for the station’s launch was repeatedly put back.
But now it appears the plant is finally on the verge of completion. Mottaki’s comments came after a second consignment of fuel for the plant arrived in Iran from Russia on Friday following the delivery of the first consignment on Dec. 17.
“The fuel delivery will be completed in eight stages,” added Mottaki. “Then the ground will be prepared for the injection of the fuel and the launching of the Bushehr nuclear plant by next summer, at the latest according to the contract. This will be half the capacity of the plant,” he said.
Russia is pressing on with the completion of the power station despite Western concerns about Iran’s insistence on using uranium enrichment to make its own nuclear fuel for use in future home-built power plants.
