Iran begins construction of four nuclear plants in $20bn project

Iran has begun construction of four nuclear power plants that will have an expected total capacity of 5,000 megawatts, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency has reported.

The plants are being built in the port town of Sirik, about 1,150km south of the capital, Tehran, Irna said.

The project will cost about $20 billion and will create 4,000 jobs, Nasser Shariflou, the head of the project, said.

Each plant is expected to use 35 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year, Mr Shariflou said.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s atomic agency, said the plants will take about nine years to complete.

Iran has one active nuclear plant, a 1,000MW power station that went online with the help of Russia in 2011. It is also building a 300MW plant in oil-rich Khuzestan province, near the western border with Iraq.

The country aims to produce 20,000MW of nuclear energy by 2041. The International Atomic Energy Agency said last year that Iran had increased the rate at which it is producing near-weapons grade uranium.

The agency’s director general Rafael Grossi said Iran had in recent weeks “increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid2023”.

Washington expressed deep concern over the reports at the time, saying they came as Iran-backed proxies were continuing their “dangerous and destabilising activities in the region”, a US representative said.

Iran’s atomic energy chief Mohammad Eslami dismissed the agency’s warnings last December, saying “we did nothing new and are doing the same activities according to the rules”.

Tehran had previously slowed the rate at which it was enriching uranium to 60 per cent purity, which is a short technical step away from the weapons-grade level of 90 per cent.

Western nations have long suspected that Iran is acquiring nuclear arms, something Tehran has denied.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed between Iran, China, Russia, the US, France, Germany, the UK and the EU in 2015.

It placed strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions.

Under former president Donald Trump, the US withdrew from the deal in 2018 and imposed its harshest sanctions, which are still in effect today. Last September, the agency complained that Tehran had effectively barred several of its most experienced inspectors from monitoring the country’s nuclear programme.

The project, which will create 4,000 jobs, is part of plans to generate 20,000 megawatts of nuclear energy by 2041