Iran says Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant highly safe

English.news.cn 2010-08-20 22:51:03

TEHRAN, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) — An Iranian official said Friday that the country's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is highly safe, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Chief of Bushehr nuclear power plant workshop, Mahmoud Jafari, said in Bushehr that "The power plant has been built based on latest safety standards and is self-controlled in nature."

The method used in the power plant's construction will minimize the chance of any incident there, Jafari told IRNA, saying the " possibility of any incident in the power plant, whose life span is about 40 years, is very low."

"No incident, like the one which took place in ... Chernobyl on April 6, 1986, will happen there (in Bushehr)," he was quoted as saying.

"Even if the incidents ... break out, it (the power plant) will be capable of bringing them under its control," said Jafari.

In August, Jafari said that the main tests and inspections of the power plant have been successfully carried out during the last six months.

Double-checks, "installations and montage stage is completed and we are about to launch the power plant," Jafari was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Russian-supported construction of the Bushehr nuclear plant is close to completion, and the physical launch of the plant is planned for Saturday with fuel being loaded into the tank, Russia' s Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement.

"The Bushehr project is unique in terms of providing a strict abidance of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Fuel for the plant will be supplied by Russia on condition of its return," the statement said.

Construction of the plant started in 1975 by several German companies. However, work halted when the United States imposed an embargo on hi-tech supplies to Iran after the 1979 revolution. Russia signed a contract with Iran to complete the construction in 1998.


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