Fuel for Iran atomic plant due in months - official
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-23 09:20

Russian fuel for Iran's first nuclear power reactor, part of a program Washington fears may be used to make bombs, will be delivered within months, a senior Iranian atomic official said on Wednesday.

Speaking during a rare visit by journalists to the plant in the southwestern city of Bushehr, Atomic Energy Organization Vice President Asadollah Saboury said the reactor was 84 percent complete and commissioning would start by the end of 2006.

Russian workers work inside a reactor building at the nuclear plant in the southwestern Iranian city of Bushehr June 22, 2005. [Reuters]

The 1,000 MW plant, the first of what Iran hopes will be up to 20 similar reactors, is being built with Russian help.

Under a deal signed between the two countries earlier this year, Moscow agreed to supply enriched uranium fuel for the reactor and to take back spent fuel so that it cannot be reprocessed by Iran into bomb-grade material.

Asked when the first Russian fuel would arrive, Saboury said: "I believe in very few months."

He said formalities for transporting the fuel were "almost finalized" and the first supply would be about 80 tons, arriving in several shipments. He said the fuel had already been prepared for shipment in Russia.

Photographers were allowed to film freely inside the plant, including the reactor area where fuel will be placed.

But they were asked not to photograph military installations such as anti-aircraft batteries designed to protect it from possible U.S. or Israeli strikes.

The Bushehr reactor, construction of which first started in the 1970s, is one of the least controversial aspects of Iran's nuclear program.

Western concerns have focused instead on the Islamic state's plans to mine, process and enrich uranium in order to produce its own reactor fuel. The same process can also be used to make bomb-grade material.

OBTAINING TECHNOLOGY

Engineers at Bushehr pointed out machinery originally supplied by a German contractor more than a quarter of a century ago when the plant was started before the 1979 Islamic revolution. After that, Russia took over helping build it.

"We used some German equipment in the new design," Ismail Ibrahimzadeh, an engineer who has worked on the site on the Gulf coast for nine years, told reporters.

Russian welders and other workers were working on the electricity turbine area and reactor building, which will be sealed off and operated automatically once fuel is introduced.

"It is the plan of our country to obtain the technology for producing fuel," Saboury said, adding that the Russian deal covered nuclear fuel for only one nuclear plant but Iran planned more. However, he said such fuel work in Iran was suspended.

Nuclear fuel work in Iran was suspended under an deal between Tehran and the European Union, which is trying to persuade Iran to scrap it in return for economic and other incentives.

Iran says it will never give up its plans to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle and has warned its suspension would not last much longer.

Asked how long it would take for Iran to start making enriched uranium once the suspension was lifted, Saboury said: "Considering the existing situation, I can tell you (it would be) very few years. It is not in the range of months."

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