Iran

Russia’s Rosatom says it plans to increase the number of its personnel at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran to 300. The announcement comes months after the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation evacuated hundreds of staff following the US-Israeli war on Iran. “The headcount is growing at present: 180 people are already on the site; we plan to increase to 300 in the near future because we do not see so far any risks related to the potential slowdown of our efforts,” Alexey Likhachev, director general of Russia’s state-owned Atomic Energy Corporation, told reporters on Friday.

He added that the situation is still tense in the region, “but we in general seek to return to the target pace of work execution and reach the planned headcount of our employees during the next year.” In March, Rosatom evacuated hundreds of staff after the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28. Last year, Likhachev noted that the company was planning to construct two nuclear power units, each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts, adjacent to the first unit of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, adding that construction was progressing.

Russia and Iran signed a contract for the construction of the first unit of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in 1995. The 1,000-megawatt facility started operating in 2011. In 2014, Russia and Iran signed another deal for the construction of two new reactors at Bushehr, with a combined capacity of about 2,100 megawatts. The ongoing construction of Units 2 and 3 is part of the expansion of Iran’s nuclear power infrastructure, while the agreements for eight additional units and small-scale power plants reflect the broader scope of nuclear cooperation between Tehran and Moscow.