Iran is set to acquire its first civilian nuclear power plant following Russia’s announcement on Friday that atomic fuel will be loaded in the facility from August 21.
Sergei Novikov, the spokesman for the Russian atomic energy corporation, Rosatom , said that loading of fuel would be a key step for starting the reactor.
The entire process of feeding fuel rods in the reactor is expected to be completed in 2-3 weeks.
“This will be an irreversible step,” Mr. Novikov was quoted as saying. “At that moment, the Bushehr nuclear power plant will be certified as a nuclear energy installation,” he added. “That means the period of testing is over and the period of the physical start-up has begun, but this period takes about two and a half months.” The first fissile reaction is expected in October.
Iran’s atomic energy agency head, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that a formal inauguration of the facility would be held in late September or early October when the fuel is moved “to the heart of the reactor”. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Mr. Salehi as saying that the reactor would be linked to the Iran’s electricity grid when it is powered to a 50 per cent level.
Analysts see Russia’s willingness to go ahead with Bushehr as a sign of Moscow’s assertion against isolating Iran through sanctions which do not have the approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
However, the reactor does not pose proliferation risks as its activities would be fully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Besides all the spent fuel generated by the plant would be shipped to Russia. Russia’s Interfax reported that fuel for the first reactor in Bushehr was delivered in January 2008.
Russia took over the plant in 1995, after the German power engineering firm Kraftwerk Union withdrew from the project, begun in the 1970s, following Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. Earlier in March, the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin had said that Russia planned to start the Bushehr reactor in the summer of 2010.
