The nuclear power plant in Bushehr will reach its full capacity before the end of the year 2010, declared the head of the Russian company 'Rosatom' Sergey Kiriyenko yesterday before the opening ceremony, RIA Novosti reports.
The stages of the reactor's launch are being coordinated with the Iranian side.
The construction of the plant started in 1974 when the German Kraftwerk Union AG, a joint venture of Siemens AG and AEG Telefunken, signed a contract worth $4–6 billion to build a pressurized water-reactor nuclear power plant. Construction of the two 1,196 MWe nuclear generating units, identical to two reactors at the German Biblis Nuclear Power Plant, was subcontracted to ThyssenKrupp AG, and was to have been completed in 1981.
Kraftwerk Union fully withdrew from the Bushehr nuclear project in July 1979, after the Islamic revolution, with one reactor 50% completed, and the other reactor 85% completed.
Iran and Russia signed a treaty on cooperation in the field of peaceful atomic energy. On 8 January 1995 Iran signed a contract with the 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. De facto, the construction of new facilities started only in 1998.
The international community is still concerned about the project, as it suspects that the plant may be used to construct nuclear weapons. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry has declared that there is no such possibility and that the 'Bushehr' project demonstrates the benefits of international cooperation to Iran, provided the Islamic Republic proves the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program.
