Iran and Russia have agreed on a schedule for financing joint nuclear projects, which will eliminate delays in payments from the Iranian side and speed up joint work, Mohammad Eslami, vice president of the Islamic republic and head of Iran's Atomic energy organization (AEOI), said on Wednesday following talks with Alexei Likhachev, director general of Rosatom state corporation, in Moscow.
"It was agreed that our payment commitments would be timed so that [the implementation of] projects would not be delayed," the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
According to the Iranian politician, "an initial agreement was reached at the meeting so that projects in the nuclear sphere would be implemented faster." He said it was about cooperation in the medical sphere as well as work at the Bushehr NPP, including operation of the first stage of the plant and development of the second and third power units.
On June 26, Ali Akbar Salehi, then head of the AEOI, said that Iran's debt to Russia for the work on the Bushehr nuclear power plant was about €500 million. On June 28, the Iranian ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said that Tehran was making efforts to repay its debt to Russia and would pay it soon.
Rosatom is building the second stage of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran (the second and third power units) with a total capacity of 2,100 MW. On November 10, 2019, work on pouring concrete began as part of the construction of the second power unit.
The Bushehr nuclear power plant was created by Russia, and plans agreed upon by Moscow and Tehran involve the construction of the second and third power units at the site. In 1995 Zarubezhatomenergostroy (now Atomstroyexport) signed a contract with the AEOI for the completion and reconstruction of the first unit of the NPP. It was connected to the grid in September 2011, its official handover to Iran took place in September 2013.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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Based on materials from TASS