TEHRAN, Nov. 16 (Mehr News Agency) -- The Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy
Committee chairman has said that Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko's
remarks about the Bushehr nuclear power plant are strange. "The hasty remarks by the Russians do not seem normal," MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi
told the Mehr News Agency on Tuesday.
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View of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Southern Iran |
The head of Russia's state nuclear power corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko,
said in February that the Bushehr plant was scheduled to become operational in
2009.
However, on Tuesday, when reporters asked him if
the nuclear power plant in southern Iran would come on stream by the end of 2009
as previously scheduled, Shmatko said that it will not be possible to start up
the plant before the year ends.
"The engineers have to reach their findings," Reuters quoted him as saying. "The
building of the Bushehr station is defined absolutely 100 percent by
technological conditions."
Boroujerdi said the Russian officials' comments are strange because Russia has
conducted a test run of the Bushehr power plant.
In late February 2009, Iranian and Russian nuclear officials carried out a test
run of the nuclear power plant, which is located just outside the Persian Gulf
port city of Bushehr.
Moscow agreed to build the nuclear power plant in 1995 and the project was
supposed to be completed in July 1999, but the start-up of the reactor has been
postponed several times.
Iran is currently at odds with the West over its nuclear energy program. In
October, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei presented a proposal for Iran,
France, Russia, and the U.S. to study, saying he hoped that all parties would
make a firm response to his draft deal.
Under the draft deal, a large consignment of Iran's enriched uranium would be
shipped out of the country, probably to Russia and France, for processing into
fuel rods with a purity of 20 percent, which would be used by a research reactor
in Tehran that manufactures medical radioisotopes.
But Russia's failure to fulfill its commitments in the Bushehr nuclear power
plant project raises serious questions about whether Iran should send its
stockpile of low-enriched uranium it has accumulated over the years to Russia,
because there is no guarantee that once Russia receives Iran's uranium, it will
deliver the 20 percent enriched uranium.
... Payvand News - 11/17/09 ... --
