During a visit to the province on Friday, Mohammad Eslami said the construction of the Darkhovin Nuclear Power Plant was well underway some 12 years after Iranian authorities had initially decided to abandon the project because foreigners had reneged on their contractual obligations.

“We decided to do this project ourselves,” the Iranian nuclear chief said, adding that now the first phase of the nuclear power plant has been completed.

Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran had signed a $2 billion contract with a French company to build a nuclear power plant at Darkhovin. However, the French withdrew from the project.

They did not fulfill their obligations due to the sanctions and abandoned the project, Eslami said.

The Darkhovin facility is a 300 MW domestically-designed pressurized water reactor (PWR) located about 70 kilometers south of Ahvaz at the Karun River.