Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi reiterated that Tehran will take the full operational control of the Bushehr nuclear power plant from Russia in the next few weeks.

“Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is in final test stages and if everything goes well we believe that the plant will be ready for inauguration and handing over to the Islamic Republic in the next few weeks,” Araqchi said in a weekly press conference in Tehran on Tuesday.

He reminded that (usually) from the time a power plant is complete to its delivery it has to undergo different tests which take time.

“(The full control of) the Bushehr nuclear power plant will be delivered to the Islamic Republic of Iran a few weeks later,” Araqchi said.

In relevant remarks earlier this month, Head of the Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation Sergey Kiriyenko said that his company is ready to transfer the full operational control of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant to the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO).

“The state company (Rosatom) will soon sign the documents to transfer the full operational control of the Bushehr nuclear power plant to Iran,” Kiriyenko said.

The Russian official underlined that Bushehr nuclear power plant is currently operating at 100-percent capacity and the process of preparing it for transfer to the project originator (Iran) is concluding.

Rosatom's construction arm, Atomstroyeksport, took over construction of Bushehr nuclear power plant after a German company pulled out of the project after the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

The Islamic Republic signed the Bushehr contract with Russia in 1995 and the nuclear power plant reached its full capacity by August 2012.

The Bushehr nuclear power plant is located about 18 kilometers South of the provincial capital.

 

News ID 185115