Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 19
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Alongside with the Bushehr nuclear power plant( NPP), the Islamic Republic will launch two new nuclear plants in the next ten years which will lead to a decrease by 21 million metric tons of pollutants' emission per year, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said.
Each thermal power plant with capacity of producing 1000 megawatts of electricity emits over seven million metric tons of pollutants in air annually, Salehi said, the country's official IRIB news agency reported Jan. 19.
The country's thermal power plants emit about 300 million metric tons of pollutants in the air in total per each year, the official added.
He said that the Bushehr, NPP, which has a capacity of producing 1000 megawatts of electricity,
helps the country to prevent emission of 7 million metric tons of pollutants every year.
Iran has signed agreement for manufacturing two new nuclear power plants, Salehi said, adding one of the plants will come on stream in next 8 years and the second one in 10 years.
Once the mentioned power plants is launched the pollutants emission from the thermal power plants would cut down by 21 million metric tons per year in total, he forecasted.
Earlier Hossein Derakhshandeh, the director of the Bushehr NPP said that the power plant prevents environmental pollution from burning fossil fuel, which helps the country to save about $200 million annually.
He added that the power plant produces about 7 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity after every fuel change, which should be done annually. Producing the same amount of electricity via fossil fuel costs $800 million, Derakhshandeh said, adding meanwhile during every fuel change about one third or 27 metric tons of the power plant's fuel should be changed which costs $60 million.
Bushehr NPP, which was inaugurated in September 2013, has a capacity of producing 1000 megawatts of electricity. The power plant is scheduled to produce up to 5 billion megawatt hours of electricity per year, which is about 2 percent of country's total electricity production.
The facility produced 6.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity after inauguration till its temporarily shutdown in February 2013 to change about 27 metric tons of its fuel and semi-basic periodic repairs.
After the fuel change completed in June 2013 the power plant has produced over 3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.
Bushehr, supplying the fuel of Iran's only nuclear power plant, is guaranteed by Russia for 10 years. Russia delivered 82 tons of nuclear fuel in 2008 and 30 more tons in May 2011 to Iran. This amount meets the Bushehr NPP's fuel needs for four years.
Edited by CN
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