Russia Signs Contract With Iran for 8 Nuclear Power Plants

Russia has signed a contract with Iran to build eight nuclear power plants, with four to be built in Bushehr, a district in the southern part of the nation, according to an announcement by the head of the Atomic Energy Organization.

Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, commented that the Iranian people wish to support the nuclear industry, as it secures the country's future, according to The Iran Press.

No one their right mind is going to target a functional power reactor. The release of materials would be Chernobyl level. Don’t be stupid not even the Israelis are that dumb.

Besides power reactors cannot be used to make weapons grade materials the Pu240 content is way too high for even advanced nation level tech. The USA tried a number of times to use reactor grade Pu every one fizzled or didn’t yield at all. VVER reactors are what the Russian export they are a PWR loop reactor that Russia can build for $1200 per kW far cheaper than anyone else even China can build a nuke for. Why? Because Russia has all the manufacturing in house at Rosatom fully vertically integrated they also supply the fuel as part of the power agreement and take the waste back for reprocessing. Russians have a long history of being leaders in the nuclear industry. They have not one two of the only commercially active fast spectrum reactors in operations. One of them also desals saltwater in bulk here again one of the only nuclear powered desalination plants anywhere. They are building a third fast spectrum reactor a huge BN1200 and a fast lead reactor as well the three others are sodium cooled.

Iran has every right to nuclear power plants the whole world agrees that the IAEA oversees them. The UAE and the Saudis are both going nuclear for power and more so for desalination which is what Iran would want them for as well.

Again no weapons state anywhere has used PWR reactors to make weapons it just doesn’t work that way. You need heavy water cooled online refueling type reactors. Canada has those and so do South Korea no one looses their minds over it. India as well. Or you need very dangerous RBMK type reactors that are graphite moderator and again on power refueling tech to get the rods out in under 6 months and also to shuffle them around the neutron flux to make the materials in the first place. VVER tech cannot be used for any of that in fact PWT burn down weapons grade materials into a grade it cannot be used to make weapons , the USA, France and the UK all use commercial PWR to demilitarize former weapons grade materials mixed in with the fuel load in power reactors.

Iran has an enrichment program that’s for weapons and they won’t use a single gram of that uranium in a power reactor won’t need too Russia sends the fuel with the VVER as a package fuel that is only 5% enrichment and useless for weapons. Iran already has uranium mines so they don’t need Russian uranium they lack the fuel fabrication plants so they will just contract fuel from Russia it’s cheaper than setting up zirconium mines, fabrication plants and crafting fuel rods from scratch.

Factoids about the Russian nuke.

First Soviet explosion Aug 1949. They had a development program starting early 40s and it had to flee the German invasion in 1941 and that slowed them down substantially. Their first graphite based facility achieved chain reaction Dec 1946. There is no scarcity of Uranium in Russia or Kazakhstan so that was never an issue.

They used that facility to be plutonium-creating.

Presto, bomb fuel.

They were on track to do their explosion in the 1948 time frame, but the commissars told them no. They had some espionage data just obtained from the US, and the Politburo insisted that the design follow that of the US, rather than homegrown, for the first explosion.

So they had to stop their construction and change over to what they felt was the less efficient and meaningful American design. By Aug 1949 they were ready and exploded a nuke — probably about a year later than it needed to be.

The Soviets then worked at fast pace. Their first H bomb exploded just 8ish months after the first US H bomb.

Key point: There is no great secret of nuclear weapons. The process has been known by physicists globally since the 1930s. The Soviets might have beaten the US to it had Germany not invaded and forced the labs to tear down, relocate and reassemble.

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