Iran Commences Nuclear Power Plant Construction

Iran has commenced construction of two new nuclear plants in the southern province of Bushehr which will be jointly built with Russia.

As per the agreement signed between the senior officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and Russia's Rosatom energy firm, Bushehr nuclear power plantds will be supplying electricity to Iran’s power grid in 10 years, where phase two of the plant will be completed in seven years and the third two years later.

“Twenty percent of the entire phase two and eighty percent of its building construction will be done by the Iranian side. We have signed an agreement to build eight power plant blocks and these blocks could be built in other parts of Iran,” Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev was quoted as saying by Press TV at a Tuesday press conference with the AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Bushehr Wednesday.

During the inauguration ceremony of new nuclear power station in the southern port city of Bushehr on Tuesday, AEOI chief said that each of the two new phases will produce 1,057 megawatts of electricity. Combined with phase one, Iran will produce some 3,300 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity in a decade.

He pointed to Iran’s plan to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity and said, “Since the cost of constructing a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant is $5,000 billion, we need to invest $100,000 billion to build nuclear power plants with a capacity to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity”.