Russia ships uranium to fuel Iranian nuclear facility

RUSSIA will load fuel into Iran’s first nuclear power plant next week despite US demands to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear energy until the country proves that it’s not pursuing a weapons capacity, officials said yesterday.

Uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on August 21, beginning a startup process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities.

“From that moment the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear-energy installation,” said Sergei Novikov, said a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency.