TVEL, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom, says it will deliver fresh nuclear fuel to Iran’s Bushehr power plant by the end of this month.
The new batch of fuel was manufactured at the Novosibirsk’s chemical concentrates plant in accordance with Russia’s contractual obligations and is ready for shipment to Iran, the company said in a statement Thursday.
Loading of fresh fuel is scheduled for September at the presence of international experts during a planned maintenance of the plant, TVEL said.
“Thus, the Iranian nuclear reactor will be connected to the country’s energy system on time without any disturbance to the consumers, as well as to nuclear and radiation safety,” it added.
Iran is hard pressed for power amid sizzling temperatures which have pushed electricity consumption to record highs.
On Thursday, Deputy Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian said the provinces of Tehran, northern Mazandaran and Khuzestan near Bushehr were the most vulnerable to possible power outages.
Iran began building the Bushehr plant in the mid-1970s with the help of Germans and French but it took more than three decades to complete the 1,000-megawatt facility.
The Islamic Republic revived the project by signing a deal with Russia in 1995. The facility on the Persian Gulf coast is Iran's first nuclear power plant, currently generating electricity at full capacity.
Workers load nuclear fuel in the reactor building at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2010.
Iran plans to build a network of nuclear power plants with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts by 2020 to cut its heavy reliance on hydrocarbons.
Iran and Russia signed an agreement in Moscow in November 2014 to build two more 1,000-megawatt units in Bushehr.
Another deal envisions possible construction of another two units at Bushehr as well as four more at another location to be determined by Iran.
Iran is overwhelmed by a growing demand for electricity as it is struggling to create new power generation capacities for its 80 million people.
At 70,000 megawatts, Iran’s power generation capacity is the Middle East’s largest but the country has to add up to 1,000 megawatts to its grid a year in order to keep pace with the runaway demand.