Iran commissions Bushehr n-power plant

Tehran: Iran's first nuclear power plant has finally linked up to the national electricity grid, official media reported Sunday. The long-delayed event is a milestone in the development of nuclear power in the country, which currently suffers UN sanctions for allegedly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

"The Atomic Energy Agency announced that atomic electricity from Bushehr power plant joined the national grid with a power of around 60 megawatts on Saturday at 2329 (1859 GMT)," the official news agency IRNA reported.

The start-up comes after many years of delays and false starts, including vicious cyber- attack that reportedly delayed commissioning by more than a year. The commissioning of the Bushehr nuclear power plant should reveal to the world that the country has joined the nuclear club despite sanctions imposed out of fear that it is covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The $1-billion, 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant will be formally inaugurated on 12 September, by which time it is expected to have been cranked up to operate at 40% capacity, Hamid-Khadem Qaemi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), told the state controlled Arabic language TV station al-Alam.

The Bushehr plant on the Gulf coast is the first of what Iran says will be a network of nuclear facilities that will reduce its reliance on its fossil fuels and is meant to be a showpiece of what it claims is a purely peaceful atomic programme.