BUSHEHR (Iran) - IRANIAN and Russian engineers carried out a test run of Iran's first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a major step toward starting up a facility that the US once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Washington was worried Iran would turn spent fuel from the plant's reactor into plutonium, which could then be used to build a nuclear warhead, and US officials pressured Moscow for years to stop helping Iran build the electricity-generating facility.
The Bushehr project dates backs to 1974, when Iran's US-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi contracted with the German company Siemens to build the reactor.
The company withdrew from the project after the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the shah.
American opposition to the plant eased when Iran agreed in 2005 to return spent fuel to Russia to ensure it can't be reprocessed into plutonium. Russia is providing enriched uranium fuel for the plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
But the US and its allies say there are deep questions about whether Iran intends to use other parts of its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons. Tehran denies that. The United States said on Wednesday that the fuel deal with Russia shows Tehran does not need the most controversial part of its nuclear program - facilities to produce its own enriched uranium.
The arrangement with Russia is 'an appropriate mechanism for Iran to see the benefits of the peaceful use of nuclear energy,' State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood said in Washington. 'It also demonstrates that Iran does not need to develop any kind of indigenous uranium enrichment capacity.' The UN Security Council, the US and other countries have demanded that Iran suspend enrichment because the process not only can produce fuel for a reactor, but can be used to develop highly enriched uranium needed to make nuclear bombs.
Iran denies it is seeking to build atomic weapons, and says it has a right to produce its own fuel for several nuclear power plants it plans to build. It says relying on imported fuel for its entire reactor program would leave it vulnerable to cutoffs as political pressure.
The tests at Bushehr brought the power station closer to full operation. But Iran and Russia's top nuclear officials, touring the facility Wednesday, would not say when exactly electricity production would begin.
The opening of the 1,000-megawatt, light-water reactor, under construction for 14 years, has repeatedly been delayed by construction and supply glitches. Russian began shipping fuel for the plant in 2007. Iran has said it aims to operate the reactor by the end of the year.
The UN Security Council has imposed three rounds of financial sanctions on Iran over the enrichment dispute, but Tehran has refused to suspend that work.
In a report last week, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had about 4,000 centrifuges actively enriching and 1,600 more 'under vacuum,' which means they are operating but not yet being fed uranium gas to spin.
An IAEA official said the Iranian numbers appeared to roughly tally with the agency's count, including machines under vacuum. The official, who insisted on anonymity in return for discussing an IAEA member nation, declined to comment on the Bushehr testing. -- AP
