Russian companies install equipment at Iranian NPP

MOSCOW, March 7 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Energy Engineering Alliance has completed installation of equipment at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, the alliance's press office said Tuesday.

Moscow-region machine-building firm ZIO-Podolsk, which is part of EMAlliance, is the main supplier of equipment to the Bushehr plant. It has supplied four steam generators and other equipment for the station's first reactor block.

ZIO-Podolsk is the core enterprise integrating equipment previously supplied to the Bushehr plant under a 1974 contract signed between Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and Kraftwerk Union (KWU), a division of Siemens engineering holding, for the construction of two blocks with a capacity of 1,300 megawatts each.

The alliance's press office said a decision on using the available German equipment would be taken jointly with the Iranian side, following technical recommendations prepared by ZIO-Podolsk.

ZIO-Podolsk completed the supply of core equipment to the Bushehr station in late 2003 and early 2004. Currently, about ten specialists from the company are working on site to assemble the equipment and address other technical issues.

Russia and Iran signed an agreement on construction of the Bushehr atomic power plant in January 1995. The launch of the first reactor block is preliminarily scheduled for 2007.

In late February 2006, federal nuclear agency head Sergei Kiriyenko said Russia intended to complete construction of the station as soon as technically feasible.