Iran Says Test of First Nuclear Power Plant Begins

By Ladane Nasseri

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian scientists began a test run of the country’s first nuclear power plant, outside the southern port city of Bushehr, adding to tensions with Western powers that suspect the Persian Gulf nation of seeking an atomic bomb.

The trial at the plant, which was built with Russian help, involved the use of non-nuclear material instead of enriched uranium, said Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

The 1,000-megawatt reactor is at the center of the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program, which the U.S. and several of its major allies say is a cover for weapons development. Iran rejects the allegation, and says the project is intended to generate electricity for its growing population.

“This is one step further on the road that leads to nuclear weapons and shows the need for even more determined and coordinated international efforts to stop Iran from laying its hands on nuclear weapons,” Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said after the operation began today.

The plant’s test run is being carried out with “virtual fuel,” Saeedi said, according to the state-run Iranian Students News Agency. The material’s properties are similar to enriched uranium, except “that when feeding it into the reactor it does not create an atomic reaction,” he said without identifying the substance.

“The primary circuit, back-up and secondary circuits are all tested to avoid any flaws” before the plant is fueled and begins generating power, Saeedi said.

‘Supply Electricity’

“We hope that in a few months it will supply electricity” to Iran’s southern provinces, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization, said on state television. The trial began during a visit to the plant that he made with Sergei Kiriyenko, chief executive officer of Rosatom Corp., Russia’s state-owned nuclear holding company.

Testing of the plant is likely to last four to seven months, Aghazadeh said, though he added that it may be completed sooner.

During the first stage of the plant’s operation, it will provide southern provinces with 500 megawatts of electricity, state television said. The plant in Bushehr province is 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Bushehr port.

The dispute over Iran’s nuclear development concerns the enrichment of uranium, which it carries out at the Natanz nuclear facility in central Iran, in defiance of United Nations sanctions. Enriched uranium can be used to fuel a reactor and, at higher concentrations, can form the core of a bomb.

Enriched Uranium

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said Feb. 19 that Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium increased by about 60 percent since the IAEA’s last report, in November, giving the country around 1,010 kilograms (2,227 pounds) of the material.

London’s Verification Research Training and Information Center estimates that 630 kilograms of low-enriched uranium could yield 15 to 22 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough for the production of a device under the supervision of an expert bomb- maker.

Both the Natanz and Bushehr sites are monitored by the IAEA, which oversees adherence to the global nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory.

Today’s trial “is a marker in Iran’s ability to operationalize a nuclear power plant,” said Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University in northeastern England.

‘Transparent’

The Bushehr plant is under IAEA supervision and Russian engineers are at the site, Ehteshami said in a telephone interview from the U.K. “This is as transparent as it gets,” he said. The U.S. would have been informed of today’s step by the IAEA and Russia and “it will not come as a surprise,” he added.

A plant with a capacity to generate 1,000 megawatts is a “global average,” Jeremy Gordon, an analyst at the World Nuclear Association, said today in a phone interview from London. This additional power “would be significant in Iran’s power supply but it’s not going to revolutionize anything for the country,” he said.

Iran generates about 30,000 megawatts from several conventional power plants, he said. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“Each country can benefit from peaceful nuclear energy,” Kiriyenko said in comments broadcast from Bushehr. “This should be under the supervision of the IAEA to ensure that it is not diverted” for military purposes. “We believe that Bushehr is in line with this,” he added.

‘Suspend Activities’

France said the Bushehr plant is authorized under Security Council resolutions, and proves there is no need for Iran to enrich its own fuel, since the Russian-designed plant only functions with specially provided Russian fuel.

“The delivery of fuel for this plant by Russia provides a further reason that Iran suspend its sensitive nuclear activities,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said in an e-mailed response. “Iran’s enrichment in no way can be justified by the continued functioning of the Bushehr nuclear center.”

France again called on Iran to suspend enrichment.

Last year’s scheduled opening of the plant was delayed by difficulties including a disagreement over payments to Russia, Iran’s government had said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Tehran at lnasseri@bloomberg.net.