Bushehr power plant to be handed to Iranian operator permanently: Official

Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi announced that Russia plans to permanently hand over the Bushehr nuclear power plant to its Iranian operator in the coming months.

The nuclear power plant will be fully delivered to the Iranian side by the Russian state company Rosatom by the end of the current Iranian year (March 19, 2016), Kamalvandi said on Saturday.

“Since two years ago, works (in the nuclear facility) have been done by the Iranian operator and the Russians have only supervised the activities of the Iranian experts,” he noted.

He further pointed to the recent meetings between Director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi and Deputy CEO of Rosatom Nikolay Spassky, saying the talks have had positive outcomes.

In the negotiations with the Russian officials, the latest measures on mutual cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) were also discussed, Kamalvandi said.

Iran’s only nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which produces 1,000 megawatts of electricity, became officially operational and was connected to Iran’s national grid in September 2011.

The Russian-Iranian agreement on the civilian use of nuclear energy, followed by a deal to construct Iran’s first nuclear power plant, dates back to 1992.

In 2014, Iran and Russia reached an agreement under which the latter is to build two new nuclear reactors on the Bushehr site, starting in the fall of 2015.