Iran won’t stop uranium enrichment – parliamentarian

MOSCOW, August 15 (Itar-Tass) -- Iran will carry on uranium enrichment, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Borouujerdi said on Sunday.

He thus responded to the latest statement by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

“Russia is providing the fuel, and taking the fuel back out," Gibbs said on Friday. "It, quite clearly, I think, underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program."

Boroujerdi said that Moscow would supply enriched uranium for the Bushehr plant as Iran planned to build a dozen more nuclear plants in the future, the Fars news agency reported.

"We in the parliament have tasked the government with producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity. That means setting up 20 power plants like Bushehr," said Boroujerdi. "To supply the fuel needed for these power plants ... we should carry out (uranium) enrichment and we are doing it," he said.

The delivery of nuclear fuel to the first unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran will start on August 21, Rosatom Assistant General Director Sergei Novikov told Itar-Tass on Friday.

“This event will symbolize the end of tests of all systems of the Bushehr NPP unit constructed by Russian experts and the beginning of the physical startup of the unit,” he said. “Rosatom General Director Sergei Kiriyenko and Iranian Vice-President, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi will take part in the ceremony.”

“The loading of fuel assemblies will begin as soon as the Iranian atomic energy supervisory body approves that action. Russian and Iranian specialists will do the works under the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” he said.

“The IAEA inspectors will remove seals from containers with nuclear fuel, examine it,” he said. “The fuel will be then transferred into a special storage facility. And when the Iranian nuclear watchdog agency gives its permission, the fuel will be loaded into the reactor.”

The Bushehr reactor will be operational by the third week of September, Fars said, though Novikov said the plant will not be ready to produce energy for another six months.

Russia and Iran agreed 15 years ago to finish the construction of the Bushehr NPP, which Siemens failed to complete. An addendum to the contract was signed in 1998.