February 16, 2005
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Menacing anti-aircraft batteries and off-limit signs attest to Bushehr's importance as a pillar of Iran's ambitious nuclear plans. But while nearly completed, it's still unclear when the power plant will go on line, and how much of a potential threat it will be when it does.
Iran denies it is interested in making nuclear weapons. Still, experts say the $800-million plant could produce enough plutonium to make 30 rudimentary atomic bombs a year.
Located near a seaside town of the same name on the Persian Gulf, the Bushehr facility and the surrounding plants, laboratories and living quarters of the Russians who helped build it are restricted to outsiders. Visitors given rare government permission to visit describe it as a mini-city, with tree-lined street separating blocks of buildings.
Mindful of the Israeli attack that destroyed Iraq's Osirak plant 24 years ago, members of the Iranian armed forces man anti-aircraft guns set up around the Bushehr plant, which will produce 1,000 megawatts of power once it goes on line.
But when that will happen remains unclear because of a prolonged Russian-Iranian dispute. Moscow has agreed to provide the fuel but wants it back once it's used to prevent the possibility Tehran may extract plutonium from the spent fuel.
Tehran has agreed to repatriate the fuel, but the two sides have disagreed on who should pay for its return.
In the last year, both Moscow and Tehran have said a deal was close, and on Wednesday, Russian officials said that Moscow nuclear chief Alexander Rumyantsev will visit Iran later this month to sign the fuel return agreement.
First shipments of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr plant could be delivered within a month or two after the signing, Rumyantsev spokesman Nikolai Shingarov told The Associated Press.
Diplomats in Vienna familiar with the Bushehr developments were skeptical, however, that the deal would be signed any time soon, suggesting the Russians were reluctant to do so unless concerns about Iran's nuclear plans were banished.
"They've said they were close to a deal many times before, and nothing's happened," said one of the diplomats, who is close to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency - the U.N. agency monitoring Iran's nuclear activities.
The main concern about Iran remains uranium enrichment - Tehran developed an enrichment program over nearly two decades of clandestine activity revealed only in 2002. It has suspended the program - which can produce nuclear weapons grade uranium - pending talks with European powers but is refusing pressure to agree to a long-term freeze or to scrap its enrichment plans.
Russia's insistence on having the spent fuel from Bushehr repatriated is meant to banish concerns that it could serve as the origin of plutonium, the other fissile material that can be the core of nuclear arms.
But - although the IAEA is policing Bushehr with remote cameras and other controls, even before it goes on line - the agreement to return all used fuel to Russia is no guarantee that nothing can go wrong.
Before repatriation, the fuel has to be stored in Iran anywhere from six months to a year, to allow it to cool.
"That's plenty of time to extract plutonium if they choose to ignore the IAEA," said another Vienna-based diplomat familiar with Bushehr.
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Associated Press Writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
C 2005 The Associated Press.
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