Iran receives last fuel consignment

 Source: alalam.ir, 28-01-2008
TEHRAN -Russia has completed delivering fuel for Iran's nuclear power plant in the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported.
A statement from Iran's Organization for Production and Development of Nuclear Energy said: "With the last consignment, Russia has fully delivered the 82 tons of fuel enriched by 1.6 to 3.6 percents along with the supplementary equipment."
Monday's delivery was the eighth consignment of fuel, which Russia began delivering on December 17.
Late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Bushehr reactor would be working at 50 percent capacity by mid-2008.
However the Russian constructors insist that the 1,000-megawatt plant will not go on line until the end of the year.
Russia's decision to ship nuclear fuel to Iran followed a US intelligence report released last month that concluded Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful in nature.
Iran says it never had a weapons program and its atomic plan is for electricity-generation purposes.
Tehran insists it has a right to enrich uranium and has raised concerns that there is no guarantee to receive fuel for a long period of time from an external source.
Foreign ministers of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the US-- plus Germany agreed on a new set of sanctions last week. The UN Security Council is due to discuss them Monday.
The Islamic Republic has already defied two rounds of sanctions and insists its enrichment right is stipulate in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).