The agreement was signed between Chief Executive Officer of Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, Sergey Kirienko, and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, in Moscow on Tuesday.
According to the deal, up to four of the projected power plants are planned to be built at the site of Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran.
The remaining four are expected to be constructed elsewhere in Iran, but the exact location has not been determined yet.
Moscow and Tehran have also expressed their intention to cooperate in the field of the nuclear fuel cycle and ecology, saying they will look into the possibility of producing components of nuclear fuel in Iran in the future.
“It is the turning point in the relations between our countries,” Salehi said, adding that now Russia and Iran “have become even closer to each other.”
Iran and Russia reached a preliminary agreement in Tehran in March to build at least two more nuclear power plants in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.
After signing a deal on the construction of nuclear plants in 1992, Tehran and Moscow reached an agreement in 1995 to complete Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, but the project was delayed several times due to a number of technical and financial problems.
The 1,000-megawatt plant, which is operating under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reached its maximum power generation capacity in August 2012.
In September 2013, Iran officially took over from Russia the first unit of its first 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant for two years.
