IAEA experts to visit Bushehr in 2013

IAEA experts will visit Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr next year, Miroslav Lipar, head of the agency’s Operational Safety Section, said on Friday. “We have already received an invitation [from Iran] and next year our mission will be in Bushehr,” he told a news conference at RIA Novosti. The plant's General Designer Valery Limarenko said in mid-May Bushehr will start commercial energy production by the end of 2012. Under a bilateral agreement approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Russia will operate the plant, supply its fuel and take away all the spent fuel for the next two or three years, but will eventually hand over full control to Iran. The construction of Bushehr took more than three decades and has been plagued by delays. Russia signed a contract with Iran in February 1998 to complete the plant, which German companies first began back in 1975.