Agence France-Presse,
Tehran (AFP): Iran on Sunday asked for bids to build two new nuclear power stations alongside a still unfinished facility in the south, despite increasing Western pressure over its atomic drive. “Iran is launching two tenders for the construction of two nuclear power stations of between 1,000 and 1,600 megawatts capacity in Bushehr,” the director of nuclear energy production, Ahmad Fayaz Bakhsh, told reporters.
The southern city of Bushehr is where Iran's first nuclear power plant is being built by a Russian contractor. But its completion, due this year, has been repeatedly delayed.
Fayaz Bakhsh said Iran's atomic energy agency would hand over the tender offer documents on Sunday for publication with a closing date for bids set at August 8.
“There are already contacts with Russian and European firms. It is expected that construction would take between nine and 11 years,” he said.
The cost of the new power plants, which will be built alongside the existing facility in Bushehr, will be between 1.4 billion and 1.7 billion dollars, he said.
The announcement of the tenders shows that Iran has no intention of surrendering its nuclear drive, despite being slapped with two sets of UN sanctions for refusing to halt sensitive atomic activities.
Western countries want Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, a process used to manufacture nuclear fuel, over fears it could be diverted to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only wants to produce energy.
Tehran has refused to give in to the demands and has pressed ahead with its nuclear programme, saying uranium enrichment has now reached an “industrial phase.”
The plan for the first Bushehr plant envisages that Russia will also deliver the nuclear fuel, but the consignment has yet to arrive and Iran has said it wants to be self-sufficient in fuel production.
“Fuel would be produced through local and foreign production. As part of the 20-year economic plan, Iran intends to produce the fuel for two power stations,” Fayaz Bakhsh said.
Iranian officials have repeatedly expressed frustration with Russia's failure to finish the Bushehr plant on time and hinted that US pressure could be to blame. Russia accuses Iran of late payments.
Foreign observers have raised questions about Iran's announcement that it can now enrich uranium on an industrial scale, pointing to a lack of information about how many uranium-enriching centrifuges it has installed.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said last week that Iran still had installed only “hundreds” of centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, well short of its medium-term goal of 3,000.
Iran's foreign ministry replied on Sunday that ElBaradei would know the exact progress of Iran's nuclear programme when IAEA inspectors return home from an ongoing regular inspection visit.
“The report will show our latest activities and will be a good thing as it will clear up ambiguities,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
ElBaradei on Sunday urged both Iran and Israel to join a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel is considered the sole — albeit undeclared — nuclear power in the region with an arsenal of around 200 warheads.
“The Middle East should be a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, a zone in which Israel and Iran are both members,” ElBaradei said, according to a palace statement after talks in Jordan with King Abdullah II.
He reiterated calls for Iran “to cooperate with us with sufficient transparency until we make sure that the Iranian programme is devoted to peaceful purposes.”
“We have not seen that this programme is devoted to military purposes and we have not seen underground facilities,” he said, but added: “There is fear over Iran's future intentions, not today but within the next five to 10 years.”
