The senior Iranian official made the remarks at a ceremony for the construction of the second nuclear reactor, known as Bushehr-2, that took place at the site in southern Iran earlier on Saturday.
Advertisement
The Iran-Russia joint project will also see another nuclear power plant built, with construction set to start in 2018. Russian Federation signed a deal with Iran in 2014 to build up to eight more reactors in the country.
There is an option to build six more in the future.
Iran’s deal with Russian Federation on the first stage of the project, Bushehr 1, goes back to 1992.
Russian Federation built the existing 1,000 megawatt reactor at Bushehr that came online in September 2011 and reached full capacity the following year.
It reached full capacity the following year.
Iran began building a second nuclear plant with Russian help on Saturday, in a $10 billion project which follows Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers past year, state media reported.
The two new plants are expected to cost some $10 billion to build, and create 1,057 megawatts of electricity, said the Associated Press news agency.
Russia’s Rosatom, the Nuclear Power Production and Development Company of Iran (NPPD) and Atomstroyexport JSC (ASE JSC) signed two contracts last November for construction of power units of Bushehr nuclear power plant on a turnkey basis.
“There were many people who did not want this project to go ahead”.
“Iran, while continuing its strict adherence to worldwide commitments under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, will strive for using peaceful nuclear energy in all of its fields such as medicine, agriculture, industry and electricity”, he said.
Advertisement
Once the whole three units come on stream together, 5 to 6 percent of Iran’s electricity will be generated by nuclear power plants.
