Bushehr plant to operate soon

“I hope in the near future the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant will operate, as our Russian partners assure,” said on Friday to journalists Iranian Ambassador to Russia Sayed Mahmood Sajadi.

The construction of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant started in 1975 when the German Kraftwerk Union AG, a joint venture of Siemens AG and AEG Telefunken, signed a contract worth US$4–6 billion to build the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant.

In 1984, Kraftwerk Union did a preliminary assessment to see if it could resume work on the project, but declined to do so while the Iran-Iraq war continued. In 1990, Iran began to look outwards towards partners for its nuclear program; however, due to a radically different political climate and punitive U.S. economic sanctions, few candidates existed.

On 8 January 1995, Iran signed a contract with Russian company Atomstroiexport to resume work on the partially-complete Bushehr plant, installing into the existing Bushehr I building a 915 MWe VVER-1000 pressurized water reactor, with completion expected in 2007. In December 2007 Russia started delivering nuclear fuel to the Bushehr nuclear power plant. On January 20, 2008 a fourth Russian shipment of nuclear fuel arrived in Iran destined for the Bushehr plant. In March, 2009, the head of Russia's state nuclear power corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced that Russia had completed the construction of the plant. A series of pre-launch tests were conducted after the announcement.

The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is the first plant not only for Iran, but all over the Middle East.