Iran to commission Bushehr nuclear power plant

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iran's first nuclear power plant will join the national power grid by the next three months, a senior Iranian lawmaker announced.

"Thanks to the efforts made by the young Iranian experts, Bushehr nuclear power plant will join the national grid within three months," Rapporteur of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazzem Jalali said on April 9, addressing a ceremony held in Iran's Southern city of Shiraz to mark the 'National Day of Nuclear Technology'.

"Nuclear-generated electricity will end shortage of power in Iran," Jalali noted, adding that Iran will produce 20,000 megawatt of nuclear electricity by the next 20 years.

The remarks by the Iranian legislator came after Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Saturday confirmed reports that Tehran has started reloading fuel into the Bushehr nuclear power plant reactor in recent days.

"The (nuclear) fuel had been unloaded from the heart of the Bushehr reactor, washed and checked, and part of it had been removed from the reactor's core and since yesterday, reloading fuel into the core of the reactor has started," Salehi, who formerly presided the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), explained in a press conference here in Tehran on April 9.

Salehi made the announcement a day after Russia's Atomstroyexport Company, which oversaw the plant's construction, said in a statement that the refueling operation started after the plant had been rechecked, Fars News Agency reported.

"The loading of fuel-rod assemblies into the core started at the Bushehr nuclear power plant on April 8," the statement added.

Iran signed a deal with Russia in 1995, according to which the plant was originally scheduled for completion in 1999. However, the project was repeatedly delayed by the Russian side due to the intense pressure exerted on Moscow by the United States and its Western allies. Russia finally completed construction of the plant last summer.