Monday, February 19, 2007

BBC: "work on an Iranian nuclear plant may be delayed because Iran is late with payments"

The repo man is coming to get the centrifuges!
Russian officials have warned work on an Iranian nuclear plant may be delayed because Iran is late with payments.

Russia has agreed a $1bn (£513m) deal to generate electricity at the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran.

Moscow last year backed limited UN sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment after objections to the Bushehr deal were dropped . . .

Under the Bushehr deal, Russia would have started fuel shipments by March, launched the plant in September and begun to generate electricity by November.

Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency spokesman Sergey Novikov said the "launch schedule definitely could be affected" by the delay in payments.

One unnamed Russian official told Associated Press Iran was blaming "technical reasons" for the delay. Iran has not commented officially.

The deal requires Iran to return spent fuel for reprocessing in order to ease fears it could be used in a weapons programme.
(Hat Tip: Captain's Quarters)

No comments: