Russian Atomic Agency Chief to Agree Bushehr Launch Date

Itar-Tass:

The Director of Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, is scheduled to visit Iran early next year, the agency’s press secretary, Sergei Novikov has told Tass. “Kiriyenko’s trip to Teheran is due in February. He is expected to go to the Bushehr nuclear plant the Iranians build with Russia’s assistance,” Novikov said.

Kiriyenko will also hold talks with senior officials supervising Iran’s national nuclear program. READ MORE

Novikov said “specification of the schedule of assembly and tune-up work and of loading the reactor with nuclear fuel of Russian manufacture” would be one of the central themes on the visit’s agenda.

The Russian Atomic Energy Agency is certain that “Russian and Iranian specialists in 2006 will carry out the physical launch of the first reactor at Bushehr.”

Earlier, officials at Russia’s general contractor company, Atomstroiexport, said “Russian and Iranian specialists in Bushehr have been doing all in their powers to eliminate the certain lagging behind the previously agreed schedule that followed failure by some Iranian and Russian providers to deliver on time the equipment necessary for completing assembly work.”

“Construction work on the premises is carried out in several shifts without any days off,” the sources said.

Russia’s nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL has said that the fuel assemblies for the reactor’s physical launch “have been made under the effective contract and are kept at the company’s warehouse in Novosibirsk.”

Some Russian politicians have said tensions over the Iranian nuclear program eased in the last days of the outgoing year.

The European troika and the U.S. Administration welcomed Russia’s invitation to Iran to arrange for a joint venture for enriching Iranian uranium in Russian territory under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, said earlier this week “the Iranian leadership should eventually accept this proposal from Russia, if it really wants to lift all suspicions the international public has over the peace nature of its nuclear program.”

Certain results of negotiations between the European troika and Russia on this proposal are already in sight.

Kosachyov said the “theme of Bushehr was practically absent from the Russian-US dialogue of late.”