Iran to build four new nuclear power plants

MOSCOW. KAZINFORM - Iran has a contract with Russia which obligates Moscow to build four other nuclear power plants in the country.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the Head of Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), said that based on a contract signed in 1992, Russia is supposed to construct the power plants at the request of Tehran, trend.az informs.

Salehi said Iran will start construction of its second nuclear plant this year.

"Two years from now, we will start the construction operation of the third plant," he explained, adding that the country will continue building next ones every two years.

"We plan to use local experts in construction of the plants as much as possible," Salehi said.

"Before the Islamic revolution [in 1979] the Americans said that Iran need to annually produce 20,000 megawatt hours of nuclear electricity. Now we want to reach the goal," he noted.

A high-ranking Iranian nuclear official said in March that Iran will launch the second stage of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in southern Iran in April. Asghar Zare'an, the Deputy Managing Director for Protection and Security at the AEOI, said that the second stage would be launched on April 9 on the National Nuclear Technology Day, Press TV reported.

He added that on the National Nuclear Technology Day, Iran will also unveil the vaccine separator centrifuge machine. Earlier this month, Russia's Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation said Tehran and Moscow were negotiating on the construction of a second unit at the Bushehr plant.

The initial construction of the Bushehr facility began in 1975 by German companies, but the work was halted following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The 1,000-megawatt plant, which is operating under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reached its maximum power generation capacity in August 2012.

In September 2013, Iran officially took over from Russia the first unit of its first 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant for two years.