The head of Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom says Moscow will start the full-scale work on the construction of the second and third units of Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) later this year.
"Full-scale construction activities at Bushehr-2 site will start in fall," Sergey Kiriyenko said on Monday during the plenary session of the Atomexpo 2015 forum in Moscow.
The new units at Bushehr's nuclear site will have two reactors, which will produce 1,000 megawatts each, tripling Iran's nuclear power production capacity.
The initial construction of the Bushehr facility started in 1975 by German companies. The work, however, stopped following Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In 1995, Tehran and Moscow reached an agreement to complete Iran’s Bushehr facility, as part of a deal signed between the two sides in 1992 on the construction of several nuclear plants in Iran.
The construction of the first Iranian nuclear power plant was, however, delayed several times due to a number of technical and financial problems.
The Bushehr plant, which is operating under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), became officially operational and was connected to the country's national grid in September 2011, generating electricity at 40-percent capacity.
The plant in southern Iran reached its maximum power generation capacity in August 2012.
In September 2013, Iran officially took over from Russia the first unit of its 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant for two years.
Back in January 2015, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said that Tehran and Moscow had signed an agreement for the construction of two more nuclear power plants in Iran's southern city of Bushehr.
“We are expecting our second nuclear power plant to go online in a matter of eight years,” Ali Akbar Salehi told Press TV.
He added that Iran's third nuclear power plant will be operational two years after launch of the second plant.
AR/GHN/HMV