BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 29. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) will achieve access to the money earned by using fewer fossil fuels as a result of the operation of nuclear power plants in Iran, Vice President of Iran and Chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami said, Trend reports.
He made the announcement after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on November 29, 2023, Trend reports.
Eslami said that a working group led by the first vice president of Iran, Mohammad Mokhber, met on November 28 and decided to allocate the fossil fuel funds to the agency and use them for building new nuclear power plants (NPPs).
He added that Iran plans to increase its NPPs’ power generation capacity to 20,000 megawatt-hours and that this requires a large amount of investment. He also said that some issues related to the construction of NPPs in the country, such as funding, were discussed at the meeting.
Eslami noted that the first unit of the Bushehr NPP, which has been operating in Iran for 10 years, has supplied 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity to the country’s network. He said that this has saved about 7 billion euros worth of fossil fuel, which is four times more than the initial investment in the unit.
Eslami also said that five coastal regions of the country have been selected for building NPPs that will have a capacity of 20,000 megawatts of electricity. He said that companies have been established for this purpose and that the work on the construction of NPPs is ongoing near Bushehr NPP, units 2 and 3, in Chabahar County of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Hormozgan Province, and Khuzestan Province.
Currently, Iran’s sole nuclear power plant in operation is the 1st unit of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.
Unit 1 of the Bushehr NPP was launched in 2011 by the Russian Atomic Company (ROSATOM). In 2013, ROSATOM handed over the operation of the unit to an Iranian company. The unit has been generating 1,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year since 2013.
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