Iranian official: 1000 MW of Nuclear Electricity to Be Added to National Grid Soon

1000 megawatt of nuclear electricity has already been generated and will be added to the country’s national grid in a couple of days, Behrouz Kamalvandi said after a meeting with Nikolai Spassky, deputy CEO for International Relations at Russian state company Rosatom in Tehran on Monday.

He also announced that Tehran and Moscow are planned to finalize an agreement on the construction of at least two more nuclear power plants in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

The agreement is part of a 1992 deal between the two countries on further nuclear cooperation.

According to the agreement, the new facilities will be built next to the first unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant and each will have the capacity to produce at least 1,000 megawatts of electricity, Kamalvandi said, adding  that the deal also includes the construction of two desalination units.

“It is possible that in addition to the two nuclear power plants, we will also discuss (the construction of) further power plants,” Kamalvandi added.

According to the Iranian official, the two sides agreed to finalize the text of the agreement by the next few weeks.

Kamalvandi also said Head of the AEOI Ali Akbar Salehi is planned to make a trip to Moscow in August to sign the related contracts.

Meantime, the head of Rosatom has said a contract on the construction of the two units at the Bushehr nuclear power plant is to be signed till the year end.

“We hope that we will sign supplements to the inter-governmental agreement and corresponding contracts,” Sergei Kiriyenko said on Monday.

Russia and Iran agreed long ago that after the first unit was put into operation, they would discuss issues for expanding the nuclear plant “because the site makes it possible to build other units”, ITAR-TASS quoted Kiriyenko as saying.