No official date for nuke plant launch yet, Iran says

PanARMENIAN.Net - A senior Iranian official underlined that no exact date can be announced for the official inauguration of Iran's first nuclear power plant in the Southern port city of Bushehr.

Fars News Agency reports that Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast made the remarks, stressing that Iran's nuclear officials have already announced that the power plant has gone through different steps to be accomplished and some experiments and tests would be performed until the project is finished.

He noted the country plans to hold a ceremony to announce the official activities of Bushehr power plant, but the exact time is not set yet.

This is while, the Russian contractor in charge of the construction of Bushehr nuclear power plant announced that the plant will reach its full power generation capacity by the end of this month.

In a statement last week, Russia's Atomstroyexport said that Bushehr nuclear power plant will reach its full capacity on May 23.

The power plant is currently generating electricity at 75 percent of its nominal capacity of 1000 megawatts, the statement said.

Atomstroyexport pointed to the test conducted on the equipment of the plant on May 1, saying that the power plant successfully generated electricity at 90 percent of its capacity during the test process.

Late in April, a senior Iranian official announced that the Russian contractor will deliver full control of the facility to Iran by the end of autumn.

"The Russian contractor will definitely deliver the power plant (to the Iranian side) by the end of this autumn," Governor-General of Iran's Southern Bushehr province Mohammad Hossein Jahanbakhsh said.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereidoun Abbasi announced earlier that the power plant is generating and sending 940 megawatts of electricity to the national power grid.