|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Iran, Russia Near Deal on Spent Fuel
Iran is set to sign an agreement with Russia promising to return spent fuel from a nuclear reactor built with assistance from Moscow, a senior Russian official said yesterday (see GSN, May 25). Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev said the two countries would sign the pact when he visits Iran this summer. “During this trip we plan to sign an additional protocol on the return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage and processing,” Rumyantsev said. Russia has continued construction of the $800 million reactor at Bushehr despite U.S. opposition. The fuel repatriation agreement is Russia’s effort to alleviate U.S. concerns that Iran could extract plutonium from spent fuel for use in a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, Iran is still some way from mastering the full nuclear fuel cycle, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said yesterday. “Iran has achieved some 60 to 70 percent of the technology needed for a full fuel cycle,” Salehi said. “We need at least 10 years to feed the Bushehr nuclear plant with the fuel,” he added. Russia would begin shipping fuel to Iran to start up the Bushehr reactor after the agreement is signed. Spent fuel would be returned to a facility in Siberia after approximately 10 years of use. Western diplomats in Moscow said those years would allow Iran to acquire the necessary technology to make bombs. Russia has said it would take much longer to do so (Reuters/Dawn, May 26).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
