Iran begins building 4 more nuclear power plants amid IAEA warnings
Western officials have long suspected Tehran of looking to produce nuclear weapons, though Iran denies this.
Iran has begun construction on four more nuclear power plants in the country’s southern coastal province of Hormozgan, with an expected total capacity of 5,000 megawatts, the state-backed IRNA news agency reported Thursday.
Quoting Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), IRNA said that the construction of the new plants is expected to take around nine years.
The plants will be built in the port town of Sirik, which is around 1,150 kilometers (715 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.
Nasser Shariflou, who will head the project, told IRNA that construction efforts will cost $20 billion and create 4,000 jobs. Each plant is expected to use 35 tons of nuclear fuel per year.
By 2041, Iran looks to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear energy.
Iran has one active nuclear power plant that, with the assistance of Russia, began operating in 2011. The country is also building a 300-megawatt plant in the Khuzestan province near the western border with Iraq.
In an interview with Al-Monitor in January, the director general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, warned that Iran was already capable of enriching weapons-grade uranium. Western officials have long suspected Tehran of looking to produce nuclear weapons, though Iran denies this.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani accused representatives of the E3 countries — France, Germany and the UK — of purposefully spreading misleading and false information regarding Iran’s commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal and its nuclear program, which the envoy described as for “peaceful purposes,” IRNA reported.
