Enemies shocked over Bushehr plant startup schedule: envoy

  TEHRAN, Aug. 16 (MNA) -- Iran’s ambassador to Moscow has stated that Russia’s announcement that the Bushehr nuclear power plant will be loaded with nuclear fuel next week caught the enemies off guard.
 “The news report about the loading of the Bushehr plant with nuclear fuel was so unexpected that it confused the enemies of this project and prompted them to issue irrelevant and illogical statements,” Ambassador Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told the Fars News Agency on Monday.
He made the remarks in response to John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who told Fox News on Friday that the Bushehr power plant would become “immune” from an Israeli attack after it is loaded with nuclear fuel rods.
“Once the rods are in the reactor, an attack on the reactor risks spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the Persian Gulf,” Bolton said. Earlier, Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) spokesman Sergei Novikov had announced that the first reactor of the Bushehr plant would be loaded with nuclear fuel on August 21. Sajjadi dismissed the Western powers’ claim that Iran should halt its uranium enrichment program because Russia has agreed to provide nuclear fuel for the Bushehr plant. “It’s like telling a renter, ‘Why are you trying to buy your own house,’” Sajjadi said.
He went on to say that Russia’s decision to load the nuclear plant will restore Tehran’s confidence in Moscow.

Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday that the reactor will reach 50 percent of its capacity one and a half months after it is fed with fuel. But the reactor will need six or seven months to reach its full capacity, he noted.
The construction of the Bushehr nuclear plant was begun in 1975 by several German construction companies. They pulled out following the imposition of a U.S. embargo on supplying high-technology equipment to Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In February 1998, Russia signed a contract with Iran to complete the construction of the nuclear plant.

Iran reacts to White House statement on enrichment suspension 

Tehran, Aug 17, (IRNA )– Iran reacted on Tuesday to the latest statements of the White House spokesman about suspending enrichment activities as Russia has supplied fuel for Bushehr’s nuclear power plant

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said it has indicated that US officials

 were not aware that when a nuclear power plant started its operation in a country, it would need nuclear fuel too.
“When Iran’s nuclear facilities, including the Bushehr Power Plant, become operational, it means that some long-term arrangements should obviously been made beforehand for supplying fuel for those facilities,” Mehman-Parast told reporters.
Speaking at his weekly press conference, the spokesman said a country with no nuclear facilities would need no nuclear fuel.