Iran Starts Fueling First Nuclear Power Plant
Tehran, Iran (AHN) – Iran began injecting fuel into its first nuclear power plant on Tuesday, a week after a small leak delayed the process.
According to state-run Press TV, fuel assemblies were loaded into the Bushehr plant under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The plant is expected to generate electricity once all 163 fuel assemblies are injected by the end of the year.
Russia is providing the fuel for the plant and taking spent fuel back out of Iran, which has received a fourth set of United Nations sanctions for violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Bushehr plant was opened in August after more than three decades of construction marred by delays, the withdrawal of the original German contractor, and the eventual agreement with Russia’s Atomstroyexport for the completion of the 1,000 megawatt reactor.
Under the agreement with Moscow, uranium enriched up to 3.6 percent will be used to generate electricity in the southern city of Bushehr and then returned to Russia for reprocessing and storage.
The insertion of fuel rods was postponed for a week because of a minor leak in a pool near the reactor, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told the Islamic Republic News Agency, the official news agency of Iran.
‘We hope that nuclear electricity would enter the national grid within the next three months,’ IRNA quoted Salehi telling the power plant’s workers on Tuesday.
Washington has led calls for sanctions against Iran’s proliferation activities but has been supportive of the Bushehr reactor.
“Bushehr is a civilian nuclear project… it actually proves that they don’t need to build indigenous enrichment facilities,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in August.
“This is a concept that closes that fuel loop and… demonstrates and proves to the world that if the Iranians are sincere in a peaceful program, their needs can be met without undertaking its own enrichment program, which call into question its motives,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also said about the same time.
Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has maintained that its nuclear program is for the peaceful production of civilian, nuclear energy. The Islamic nation has two uranium-enrichment plants: a covert facility in Natanz that was discovered in 2002 and another in Qom that was also discovered by Western nations before Iran’s disclosure last year.
Early this year, Iran began producing 20 percent-enriched uranium at its Natanz facility, prompting heightened international concerns that it could develop a nuclear weapon despite assurances that the fuel is for production of medical isotopes for cancer patients.
Iran received a fourth set of sanctions from the U.N. Security Council in June. The sanctions prohibit Tehran from undertaking activities involving ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons, and other nations from selling tanks and military aircraft or providing technical assistance about such weaponry to Iran.
The new sanctions came less than a month after Iran agreed to send some of its low-enriched uranium to Western nations in a nuclear exchange agreement that had been in negotiations since last year.
Iran agreed to send 1,200 kilograms of 3.5 percent-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for 120 kilograms of 20 percent-enriched uranium for its Tehran Research Reactor.
The exchange agreement requires Russia and France to send fuel for the Tehran reactor within a year after Iran ships out its own fuel. It was negotiated with Brazil and Turkey, the two nations in the 15-member Security Council that voted against new sanctions.
The United States is part of a group of nations called the P5+1 negotiating with Tehran on disarmament. Talks are so far at an impasse, and Salehi told IRNA on Tuesday that an official request from the P5+1 would be needed to resume negotiations about the fuel swap.
Washington classifies Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and believes the Islamic nation provides assistance to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and members of the Taliban. According to the U.S. Treasury and State departments, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards train, fund and provide weapons to terror groups and Iraq-based militants.
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