Rosatom says first Bushehr nuclear plant staff returning to Iran
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said the first six employees of Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant had begun returning to the site, RIA news agency reported on Friday, citing the company’s CEO Alexei Likhachev.
Rosatom, which is building two new reactors at the Bushehr plant in southern Iran, evacuated hundreds of employees after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28.
The company halted work at new units of the Iranian nuclear power plant in the port city of Bushehr because of the US-Israeli air assault on Iran, Likhachev said in early March.
Likhachev had earlier warned of the threat posed by strikes near Iranian nuclear facilities, and said explosions could be heard “just kilometers away” from the plant, although the facility itself was not targeted.
The Bushehr nuclear power plant is currently operating, while its second and third units are under construction.
The plant has a net generating capacity of 915 megawatts (MW), accounting for 1% of Iran’s total electricity generation capacity, and has annual electricity production of about 6 to 7 terawatt-hours.
Its first unit was built with Russian cooperation and was designed to generate 1,000 MW of power. As of July 1, it had produced a cumulative 80 million megawatt-hours of nuclear-generated electricity supplied to Iran’s national power grid, according to Tasnim News Agency.
Last June, Rosatom signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iran to cooperate on the construction of small nuclear power plants in the country.
The agreement was signed in Moscow following talks between Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), and Likhachev.
Rosatom said the MoU set out specific steps for implementing the strategic project in Iran.
According to Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, the agreement signed was “worth $25 billion.”
“This is Iran’s largest atomic project, being carried out by Iran’s private sector in cooperation with Rosatom,” he said.