Nuclear plant in Bushehr
Photo: AP
Iran receives 6th shipment of Russian nuclear fuel
IRNA reports 11-ton load of enriched uranium transferred to the light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran received a sixth shipment of nuclear fuel Thursday from Russia, destined for a power plant being constructed in the southern port of Bushehr, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The report said the 11-ton load of enriched uranium arrived in Iran and was transferred to the light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant Thursday morning. The remainder of the fuel will arrive in two separate shipments in the coming weeks, it said.
"Of 82 tons of initial fuel needed for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, 66 tons have been shipped to Iran so far," the agency reported.
Iran received the fifth shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia on Tuesday. The first shipment arrived on Dec. 17 after months of dispute between the two countries, allegedly over delayed construction payments for the reactor.
Iran has said Bushehr, the country's first nuclear reactor, will begin operating in the summer of 2008, producing half its 1,000-megawatt capacity of electricity. Russia's decision to ship nuclear fuel to Iran follows a US Intelligence report released last month that concluded Tehran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and had not resumed it since. Iran says it never had a weapons program.
It also came after the UN Nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had been truthful about its past uranium enrichment activities. The United States and Russia have said that by supplying Iran with nuclear fuel, the Islamic state has no need to continue its own uranium enrichment program - a process that can provide fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb.
Iran has insisted it would continue enriching uranium to fuel a 300-megawatt light-water reactor in the country's southwest.
Iranian officials have said they plan to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next two decades.
