Iran tests Bushehr nuke plant's reactor turbine

PanARMENIAN.Net - Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereidoon Abbasi announced that the country has successfully tested the turbine of the reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, and said the plant is reaching full power generation capacity.

"Yesterday, tests of the turbine of the reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power plant have been successfully carried out at 3000 revolutions," Abbasi told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, August 24, Fars News Agency reported.

He mentioned that the reactor has reached 400 megawatts of power generation capacity now, and added that preparatory measures are underway to start the final prelaunch phase of the plant, as scheduled.

Iran had announced that its first nuclear power plant will join the national power grid by the end of August.

"We hope that the Bushehr power plant would become operational by the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan (late August)," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said earlier this year.

Mehman-Parast added that construction phase of the plant "has almost completed and it is currently in the testing stage".

Iran signed a deal with Russia in 1995, according to which the plant was originally scheduled for completion in 1999. However, the project was repeatedly delayed by the Russian side due to the intense pressure exerted on Moscow by the United States and its western allies. Russia finally completed construction of the plant last summer.

On October 26, Iran started injecting fuel into the core of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in the initial phase of launching the nuclear reactor.

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