Iran to take temporary control of Bushehr plant in 3 months: Abbasi

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi says the country will take over the temporary control of its first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr within the next three months.

“The predictable date for the temporary transference of control [of the Bushehr nuclear power plant] will be the end of the [current Iranian] year (March 2013),” Abbasi said on Saturday.

The Iranian official noted that the Bushehr nuclear power plant is currently operating at its maximum capacity, generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

He said that 910 megawatts of the generated power is delivered to the national grid while the remaining goes to the plant’s own electricity needs.

Abbasi added that the experimental tests for each phase of the production capacity will be carried out to assure the accuracy of the technical performance.

The initial construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant began in 1975 by German companies, but the work was halted following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In 1995, Iran and Russia reached an agreement to complete the project, but power generation was delayed several times due to a number of technical and financial problems. Iran officially launched the Bushehr nuclear power plant on September 12, 2011.

The plant had been connected to the national power grid on September 3, supplying 60 megawatts of its 1,000-megawatt capacity then.

The Bushehr nuclear power plant reached its full electricity production capacity of 1,000 megawatts for the first time in early September.

The facility is operating under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).