Iran launches test run of first nuclear power plant

BUSHEHR, Iran. February 25. KAZINFORM Iran on Wednesday launched a test run of its first nuclear power plant which is being built by a Russian contractor near the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, and Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Rosatom state nuclear energy corporation, were present at the site to inspect the trial run of the power plant. Mohsen Shirazi, an Iranian official in charge of the Bushehr power plant project told reporters that virtual fuel consists of lead has been loaded into the plant. "After this phase (loading of virtual fuel), when the test has been finished successfully real fuel which contains enriched uranium with assured concentration will be used instead of virtual fuel," Shirazi said, adding that the process of loading virtual fuel started 10 days ago The 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant, which had been scheduled for operation in 2007, is expected to be completed by the end of this year after repeated delays. "The construction stage of the nuclear power plant is finished," Kiriyenko told reporters, "we are now in the pre-commissioning stage, which is a combination of complex procedures." "This is virtual fuel injection to test how the reactor works," he added. According to Iran's official IRNA news agency, Iran and Russia will announce an operation date for the plant on Wednesday. The Bushehr plant, Iran's first nuclear power plant, originally started in the mid-1970s by Siemens of Germany but was abandoned with the outbreak of the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran and Russia, after reaching an agreement on nuclear cooperation in 1992, signed a contract in January 1995 to finish the construction of the plant, the completion of which has been repeatedly delayed, Kazinform cites Xinhuanet.