MOSCOW, March 12 (Reuters) – Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom will stay in Iran despite the conflict in the Middle East and is committed to its agreement to build two more units at the Bushehr nuclear plant, its head Alexei Likhachev said on Thursday.
Rosatom, which built the first 1‑gigawatt unit of Iran’s sole nuclear power plant at Bushehr, evacuated some of its staff and suspended construction work on the new units after the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28.
Around 450 Rosatom employees remain at the site, Likhachev said, after 150 returned to Russia via Armenia this week.
“The construction of the second and third units remains among the corporation’s priorities. It is definitely not the time to leave. What is happening in the Middle East is only part of a global mosaic,” Rosatom quoted Likhachev as saying.
On Monday, Likhachev said that the situation around Bushehr remained tense but that there had been no strikes on either the plant or the construction site.
A bilateral agreement between Russia and Iran allows for the construction of up to eight nuclear units, four of them at Bushehr.
Last autumn, Iran said it had signed a $25 billion agreement with Rosatom to build four nuclear power units with a capacity of 5 gigawatts at another site in the country’s southeast. The parties also signed a memorandum on developing small nuclear power plants in Iran.
(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova. Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
