BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 7. Iran holds great potential in various fields of nuclear technology and has made various achievements in this regard, Deputy Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said during an exhibition on the country's achievements in the nuclear industry in Tehran on May 6, Trend reports.
According to him, currently more than 17,000 people are working in the nuclear fields in various cities of Iran, including Tehran, Bushehr, Arak, Karaj, Qom, Natanz, Yazd, and other cities.
Kamalvandi said that the mentioned number of people work not only in energy and enrichment, but also in healthcare, agriculture, industry, laser, and other new technological fields.
“Following the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, countries such as Germany, Belgium, and France stopped all work on nuclear energy and the construction of atomic power plants in Iran and left the country. Iran, on the other hand, has determined the share of nuclear energy in the energy basket based on three models (Message, Leap, and Wasp). According to each of these models, the share of nuclear electricity is at least 8-14 percent,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Iran declares that it intends to use its nuclear industry for peaceful purposes and aims to use this industry in electricity generation, agriculture, and other fields.
The first unit of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant began operations in 2011. An Iranian company took over the unit's operation from Rosatom in 2013. Since 2013, this unit has generated the maximum amount of electricity—1,000 megawatt hours of electricity. Over the past 10 years, electricity generation at Bushehr NPP has exceeded 65 billion kilowatt-hours.
Construction of Bushehr NPP Blocks 2 and 3 began in 2017 on an area of 50 ha. Once operational, each of these units can generate 1,057 megawatts of electricity. The commissioning of these two units will save 10 million barrels of crude oil or 1.6 bcm of gas per year and prevent the release of seven million tons of polluting gases into the environment.
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