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Friday, February 6, 2009

Russia announces new deadline to open Iran's Bushehr reactor: mid-2010

MOSCOW — Russia has again delayed the launch of Iran's first nuclear reactor.   

Officials said Russia has revised its deadline for the start of Iran's Bushehr nuclear energy reactor. They said the latest timetable called for the full operation of the 1,000 megawatt reactor in 2010.

"The absolute priority is security," Sergei Kiriyenko, director of Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, said. "No matter how many times we need to prepare for a safe startup, we will do it."

In a briefing on Feb. 5, Kiriyenko said Rosatom was preparing to begin operations at the $1 billion Bushehr in late 2009. He said he would travel to Bushehr in February 2009 to oversee plans to complete the nuclear power plant.

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"If there are no unforeseen events, then the launch will go according to the timetable," Kiriyenko said.

As late as December 2008, Iran and Russia said Bushehr would be launched by July 2009. Kiriyenko said the latest deadline has won Iranian approval.

Officials said the Russian plan called for initial operations at Bushehr — meant to test the reactor's systems — in December 2009 or early 2010. They said full operations would take at least another few months.

In early 2008, Russia delivered more than 80 tons of nuclear fuel for the startup of Bushehr. But officials acknowledged that safety and integration difficulties slowed down plans to complete the reactor, begun by Germany's Siemens in the late 1970s.

"We are working to integrate the old equipment," Kiriyenko said. "It is a unique project that no one has ever done before. We are integrating in the project old German infrastructure that was delivered 25 years ago."



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