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364531
Wed, 04/22/2015 - 11:27
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Rosatom, Iran’s atomic energy organization to discuss building power units at Bushehr NPP

TEHRAN, April 22. /TASS/. Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom’s deputy head Nikolay Spassky has arrived in Tehran for talks on building the second and third power units at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant (NPP), IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday. Spassky will meet with deputy spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi. "We will discuss the issues of cooperation in building two new power units at Bushehr [NPP]. The construction will start next year," IRNA quoted Kamalvandi as saying. Iran plans to commission the second power unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant within the next eight years. Apart from that, he said, the third unit of the Bushehr nuclear plant will be built within two years after hooking up the second unit to the national power grid. AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran has set a goal of generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity from the use of nuclear energy. So far, Iran’s only nuclear plant in the southern port city of Bushehr is capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity. The Bushehr first unit was put into operation in 2011. This was one of the most difficult projects in the history because the construction started in 1974 and ended in 1980. Twelve years later Russia and Iran agreed to resume the activities. It took 14 years to build the plant. The Bushehr nuclear power has never been targeted by any international sanctions. The plant is being built under the control of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). In compliance with the supplements to the 1992 agreement, Iran was obliged to return spent nuclear fuel back to Russia. In November 2014, Russia and Iran signed a package of agreements to build eight nuclear power units in Iran. Russia will also produce nuclear fuel for Iranian nuclear power plants during the whole service life of the eight new power units. Spent nuclear fuel will be also returned to Russia for reprocessing and storage. In particular, a contract signed to build the second line of nuclear power plant Bushehr, envisages the construction of two nuclear power units with possible expansion to four power units. Read more

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