A senior Russian official underlined that full control of the first phase of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Southern Iran will be handed over to Iranian technicians later this month.

“Iranian technicians will assume responsibility for the first operational unit of the facility on September 24,” Russian President’s Foreign Policy Advisor Yuri Viktorovich Ushakov told reporters on Thursday.

He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani will discuss the use of peaceful nuclear energy by Iran on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Kyrgyz capital city of Bishkek on Friday.

In relevant remarks last month, Director of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Hossein Derakhshandeh announced that the Iranian experts will take the operational control of the Bushehr nuclear power plant from Russia in the next two months.

He underlined that the Bushehr atomic power plant has entered the operational phase for safe and sustainable generation of electricity.

Head of the Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation Sergey Kiriyenko said last month that his company is ready to transfer the full operational control of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

“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 185263