Iran, Russia lay foundation stone of Bushehr 2 nuclear power plant

Iran will send the first advance payment to Russian Federation to finance the ongoing construction of the Bushehr-2 nuclear power plant by the end of the year, a site leader with Russia’s Atomstroyexport foreign trade engineering firm, Suren Ambartsumyan, said.

The existing plant became operational in 2011. World powers lifted their sanctions, unlocking billions of dollars for Iran and clearing the way for new business opportunities there. A report by the United Nations nuclear agency has found that Iran has kept to the nuclear deal it agreed with six world powers past year.

Iran rejects Western allegations that it is seeking nuclear weapons, insisting its atomic program is for entirely peaceful purposes.

According to IRNA, the construction of the other power plant will be launched in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi estimates that each reactor frees up about 11 million barrels of oil per year. He said the deal, implemented in January, has pushed the time-frame for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon if it violated the agreement from two or three months to “about a year”.

Ali Akbar Salehi, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), made the announcement in an interview with IRIB on Saturday night, adding “we can also manufacture a considerable part of equipment outside Nuclear Island, therefore the agreement has been drawn in a way that if Iran’s industry manufactures according to standards, Russians will be willing to concede the equipment to the Iranians”. “We’ll also attract construction workers from both Iran and third countries wherever this is economically feasible to do so”, he said.

In addition to the new nuclear power capacity, desalinations facilities with a daily capacity of 200,000 cubic metres are to be built, lowering the cost of supplying clean water to the southern cities of the semi-arid country, Salehi added. Russian Federation signed a deal with Iran in 2014 to build up to eight more reactors in the country.

Russian Federation signed a contract with Iran in 1998 to complete the construction.