A $25bn deal has been agreed in Moscow expanding the existing strategic partnership between Iran and Russia and paving the way for the construction of four NPPs in southern Iran. The agreement between Iran’s Hormoz Company and Russia’s Rosatom Project Company formalises plans to build four NPP units in the coastal town of Sirik, in Hormozgan province. It was signed by Nasser Mansour Shariflou for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, and Dmitry Shiganov for Rosatom, in the presence of Iran’s Ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali.
The project, to be situated on a 500-hectare plot in the Kuhestak district, will have a total capacity of 5,020 MWe. It is based on an existing intergovernmental agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, with site selection and preliminary engineering studies already completed.
This comes two days after a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in construction of small-scale nuclear power plants (SMRs) was signed by Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev and AEOI head Mohammad Eslami, who was in Moscow to attend Rosatom’s World Atomic Week.
Iran and Russia already have an agreement in place for the construction of eight nuclear units in Iran, which plans to have 20 GWe of nuclear energy capacity in place by 2040. Russia is already building two more units at the Bushehr NPP in southern Iran, where the first unit has been in operation since 2011.
Construction of the Bushehr NPP began in 1975 with a West German company but stopped in 1979 after the start of the Islamic revolution. In 1992, Russia and Iran signed an agreement to continue construction of the station using Russian VVER-1000 technology. Unit 1 was officially transferred to Iran in September 2013.
