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Iran Confirms Launch Of First Nuclear Power Plant In Bushehr, Russia To Supply Reactor Fuel
Some developments out of Iran, which after 35 years in delays is set to launch its first nuclear power plant, a fact confirmed by Ali Akbar Salehi, the country's atomic energy chief. This had been preannounced by Russia, which helped build the facility located next to the city of Bushehr. More surprisingly, Russia has formally announced that it would be the country supplying Iran with reactor fuel, effectively ignoring almost 4 decades of roadblocking by the West to bring the NPP project to a conclusion. Did Russia just (in)formally announce it is joining into a new axis with Iran?
From AFP:
Iran's atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Friday confirmed next
week's launch of the Islamic Republic's first nuclear power plant, as
announced by Russia which has helped build the facility."We are
preparing to transfer the fuel inside the plant next week [...] then we
will need seven to eight days to transfer it to the reactor," said
Salehi.Ending years of delays, a spokesperson for the Russian
atomic agency said on Friday that the plant in the southern Iranian city
of Bushehr will formally launch on August 21."The fuel will be
charged in the reactor on August 21. From this moment, Bushehr will be
considered a nuclear installation," Rosatom spokesperson Sergei Novikov
said. "This can be considered as the physical launch."
And a follow up from ABC.AU
After years of delays, Russia's atomic agency says it will begin loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant next week.
Russia has been helping build the plant since the mid-1990s.
Loading fuel into the reactor will be a key step towards starting it up, but there is still no firm date when Bushehr will be fully operational.
Many Iranians will remain skeptical until it is finally working and generating electricity.
The reactor is being built and operated by the Russians, and many in Iran believe that the endless delays in the project are designed either to extract more money from them, or as a result of Western pressure.
The reactor has taken around 35 years to build, an indication of the project's troubled history.
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No way anyone attacks Iran now. If the world economy was not in terrible shape it might happen. An attack now would drive the price of crude off the charts and trigger other events that no sane person wants to see...like the collapse of the world economy that all the fat cats rely on and a possible dust up between N and S Korea, China vs innumerable targets, Iran takes out Saudi oil facilities, etc.
But its precisely because its in terrible shape that these things happen.
Then everything can be " reset " - well what will left over can be reset anyway ..
"As long as Israel has nuclear weapons, how exactly it is destabilizing to the middle east for anyone else to have them?"
Israel has demonstrated a willingness to not use their weapons. Given the statements coming out of Iran do you really think these people will not jump at the first 'excuse' to use them? Or are you one of those apologists who constantly assure us the Iranians don't really mean anything they say?
That attitude reminds me of a relative who has lived with an angry mean drunk for years and assumed he was all bluster - until he kills the family one night. If somebody makes threats I believe them.
I believe that Iran has no nuclear weapons (as per the National Intelligence Estimate) and that even if they had one, they would not be so irrational as to use it, as that would lead to their own certain destruction.
You are the apologist for double-talk.
Yes, no one ever miscalculated and started a war that led to their destruction...
Iran's destruction in such a case is would be so obvious that it could not be ignored. However, your grandstanding is just the sort of thing that might turn lead to great destruction of American blood and treasure. Because "we" think we are right and "we" think that "we" can only win.
Nobody wins in a war except the arms merchants.
Nobody wins in a war ...
So - the Romans didn't win when they drove the Jews out of Jerusalem? France didn't win when England/U.S. drove Hitler out? The Colonists didn't win when they drove the British out? The Vandals and the Goths didn't win when they defeated Rome?
No, the Romans never drove the Jews out of Jerusalem. They have simply destroyed the Pharisee's temple. There has never been a "diaspora" as Zionists argue to establish their fake claim to Palestine.
Go learn some real history with Prof. Schlomo Sand. He wrote something very rare these days, a real history of the Jews.
Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile: Israel deliberately forgets its history
By Schlomo Sand
An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle Easthttp://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel
And a review of his book by ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon :
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/shlomo-sands-the-invention-of-the-jewish...
First Jewish–Roman War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War
Israel Bartal, dean of the humanities faculty of the Hebrew University, in a commentary published in Haaretz,[9] writes that Sand's basic thesis and statements about Jewish historiography are "baseless". Bartal answers to "Sand's arguments (...) that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure" [and that] Sand applies marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish historiography and, in doing so, denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical scholarship." Bartal refers to Sand's overall treatment of Jewish sources as "embarrassing and humiliating." He adds that "The kind of political intervention Sand is talking about, namely, a deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true biological origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the promotion of the story of the Jews' exile from their homeland is pure fantasy." Bartel summarizes his critique of Sand's characterization of Jewish historiography as follows: "as far as I can discern, the book contains not even one idea that has not been presented earlier in their books and articles by what he insists on defining as "authorized historians" suspected of "concealing historical truth,"" and calls the overall work "bizarre and incoherent."[9]
Tom Segev wrote that Sand's book "is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state" and that the book is generally "well-written" and includes "numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time".[8]
Anita Shapira wrote "Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions without bringing any evidence to bear."[10]
For Ofri Ilani, "(...) most of [the] book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from."[6]
Hillel Halkin has cited the book as an example of the notion that there is "no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone."[11]
Jeffrey Goldberg likened the book to Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, another book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976.[12] "Today," Jeffrey Goldberg said, "The Thirteenth Tribe is a combination of discredited and forgotten." Goldberg also accused Sand of having disingenuous motives:
[edit] DNA AnalysisIn June 2010, genetic research supervised by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine, and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, led to a whole series of journalistic comments on Sand's book.[13] An article in Newsweek titled "The DNA Of Abraham's Children" challenges through genetic analysis Sand's assertion that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group: "The DNA has spoken: no." Genetic analysis is not only supposed to show this to be untrue but that modern Jewish genes can be shown to trace back to a common people of Middle East origin. [14]
A New York Times article on the same studies notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times." Nevertheless, geneticist Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states in an article in Science that although the study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it "doesn't entirely eliminate it either."[15] The genetic study is consistent with the view promoted by Sand that, "from the time of the Hellenistic Jewish writers in the second century BCE to Philo Judaeus of Alexandria in the first century CE, not only was conversion favorably received, but some of the writings actually promoted it."[16] Thus the study states:
First Jewish–Roman War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War
Israel Bartal, dean of the humanities faculty of the Hebrew University, in a commentary published in Haaretz,[9] writes that Sand's basic thesis and statements about Jewish historiography are "baseless". Bartal answers to "Sand's arguments (...) that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure" [and that] Sand applies marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish historiography and, in doing so, denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical scholarship." Bartal refers to Sand's overall treatment of Jewish sources as "embarrassing and humiliating." He adds that "The kind of political intervention Sand is talking about, namely, a deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true biological origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the promotion of the story of the Jews' exile from their homeland is pure fantasy." Bartel summarizes his critique of Sand's characterization of Jewish historiography as follows: "as far as I can discern, the book contains not even one idea that has not been presented earlier in their books and articles by what he insists on defining as "authorized historians" suspected of "concealing historical truth,"" and calls the overall work "bizarre and incoherent."[9]
Tom Segev wrote that Sand's book "is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state" and that the book is generally "well-written" and includes "numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time".[8]
Anita Shapira wrote "Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions without bringing any evidence to bear."[10]
For Ofri Ilani, "(...) most of [the] book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from."[6]
Hillel Halkin has cited the book as an example of the notion that there is "no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone."[11]
Jeffrey Goldberg likened the book to Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, another book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976.[12] "Today," Jeffrey Goldberg said, "The Thirteenth Tribe is a combination of discredited and forgotten." Goldberg also accused Sand of having disingenuous motives:
[edit] DNA Analysis
In June 2010, genetic research supervised by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine, and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, led to a whole series of journalistic comments on Sand's book.[13] An article in Newsweek titled "The DNA Of Abraham's Children" challenges through genetic analysis Sand's assertion that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group: "The DNA has spoken: no." Genetic analysis is not only supposed to show this to be untrue but that modern Jewish genes can be shown to trace back to a common people of Middle East origin. [14]
A New York Times article on the same studies notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times." Nevertheless, geneticist Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states in an article in Science that although the study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it "doesn't entirely eliminate it either."[15] The genetic study is consistent with the view promoted by Sand that, "from the time of the Hellenistic Jewish writers in the second century BCE to Philo Judaeus of Alexandria in the first century CE, not only was conversion favorably received, but some of the writings actually promoted it."[16] Thus the study states:
Of course Schlomo Sand is a threat to Zionists, given that Israel's culture, legitimacy and existence is based myths, propaganda, brainwashing and paranoia. From "Biblical Archeology" to the current genocide of the palestinians, pseudo-scientific narratives emanating from Israel reinforce Zionist theft, corruption, treason and extortion. It is no wonder that from a Zionist perspective truth is "anti-semitic".
Israeli filmmaker Yoel Shamir asked the question "what is anti-semitism today?". The reply is the film "Defamation". It is mandatory viewing for anyone who has been intimidated or defamed as an "anti-semite".
Anti-semitism is a racket.
Which weapons?
So far, only the US showed their willingness to use nuclear weapons.
That is the way it is.
Apologism? Well, to demonstrate a willingness not to use their nuclear weapons, Iran must have nuclear weapons.
Besides, what is your point on South Africa?
South Africa under Apartheid had nuclear weapons. When bargaining for democracy, the western powers involved in the process issued the demand that South Africa should relinquish their nuclear weapons option or there would be no democracy access for them.
I wonder what your point is. The yet to be born democratic government in South Africa yelped threats of using nuclear weapons?
Hopefully someone will contaminate the nuclear fuel so it melts down and destroys the plant.
Yeah, I think Lennon wrote a song about that once.
Bullseye Davey. Sweet shot.
Yeah, I hate brown people too.
Russia has apparently done an end run around US/Israel by deploying its vaunted S-300 missile air defense system in Abkhazia.The S-300 so coveted by the Iranians and withheld by the Russians is supposedly the game changer in any confrontation with Israeli F-14 and F-17 jet bombers. Along with further deployments of US forces already in Azerbaijan and the Iran in full deployment on the other side of its northern border, its obvious that in an insanely volatile situation we are just a hairs breadth from an almost unthinkable conflagration.
All these anti-air systems are supposed to be game changers but they get jammed or destroyed somehow. Didn't Syria have some cool anti-air? Their nuke plant got bombed.
The Syrians had just recieved Russian Pantsyr-S1E SAM systems which were not in operation at the time of the attack (convenient intelligence passed on to the Isrealis by the C.I.A.). Isreali F-15/F-16's had only to navigate past outdated Pechora-2A (S-125/SA-3) missle defense systems. (1960's technology). Had the Pantsyr's been fully operational the Isrealis would not have attacked I can assure you.
Israel said it bombed some sort of nuclear facility and Syria denied it.
"Operation Orchard[2][3] was an Israeli airstrike on a target in the Deir ez-Zor region[4] of Syria carried out just after midnight (local time) on September 6, 2007. The White House and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later declared that American intelligence indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose, though Syria denies this.[5][6] An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation reported evidence of uranium and graphite and concluded that the site bore features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor, but was unable to confirm or deny the nature of the site due to Syria's failure to cooperate.[7] Syria has disputed these claims"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orchard
I think the greatest risk we run here is that the Russians built this plant with the same standard of care with which they built Chernobyl.
Chernobyl was a very early reactor design without more modern safety controls. The problem was the Soviet Union didn't upgrade or maintain their aging reactor, the rest is irradiated history. They should of retired it before it became a problem, but that's not Russian thinking.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 12, 2010, 10:12 PM (GMT+02:00) Russian S-300 interceptors now in Abkhazia
US and Israeli military sources told debkafile Thursday, Aug. 12, that a threat from Georgia was not the reason why Russian posted advanced S-300 interceptor batteries Russia in Abkhazia and air defense weapons in South Ossetia on the northern shore of the Black Sea -as Moscow officially maintained, but rather possible moves by the US and/or Israel against Iran and its nuclear facilities.
Georgia's armed forces do not run to the sophisticated warplanes, missiles or drones that would warrant establishing the high-powered S-300 interceptors for defending the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.Ordinary air defense batteries would do for deterrence.
Therefore, US military sources believe Moscow placed the sophisticated batteries on the Black Sea shore more as a counterweight for the US Sixth Fleet warships present in the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the two big American bases close to the latter waterway - the Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta, Romania, and the Bezmer Air Base used by the US Air Force just 50 kilometers from the southern shore of the Black Sea.
Their location gives the US Air Force the freedom to operate over both the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
Our military sources disclose that attention was drawn in Moscow and Tehran to the exercises the Israeli Air Force has been conducting from the two American bases to simulate strikes against Iran's concealed nuclear sites.
They noticed in particular the Israeli Yasur CH-53 helicopter which crashed in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania on July 26, killing six Israeli airman and a Romanian flight captain. It was obvious to Russian and Iranian observers from the way the CH-53 crashed and the veil of secrecy clamped down by Israeli authorities that it had been engaged in practicing touch-and-go attacks on nuclear sites which the Iranians have holed up in tunnels burrowed in the sides of lofty mountain precipices.
DEBKfile's intelligence sources do not doubt that Russian placed the top-of-the line air defense systems in Abkhazia for intercepting flights taking off from the American bases in Bulgaria and Romania and heading east over Georgia and Azerbaijan and on to the Caspian and Black Seas to northern Iran.
Byt deploying the S-300s, Moscow has put paid to any plans Israel may have had for using this northern route for attacking Iran.
The deployment was also a message of reassurance from Moscow to Tehran: Although Russia is withholding the advanced S-300 interceptors from Iran it has its own methods for blocking an American or Israel raid on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities.
Russia is on such a roll. Putin is a chess and judo master, the DC whore boys of the financial oligarchy are total pussies compared to Vlad. He runs rings around Matzoh Eating Treason Monkeys here and in Russia, and he's not even breathing hard. If they are so stupid to push their craven shit too far, this man will kick their sorry asses in. And I'll enjoy watching.
As I've said, love him or hate him, Vlad is one hell of a formidable dude. I have a hunch he got himself deprogrammed or burned through it on his own. We should be pursuing very close cooperation and friendship with Mr. Putin and the great Russian people.
They sure beat the bags of shit and filth the USA now hangs with.
Bomb the fuckers now, before they get their hands on the gooey luminous green stuff...
Please feel free. Off you go! That's a good boy.
Give me the button, i'll press it!
According to the report, Iran has a nuclear power plant to produce electricity and will get the needed fuel from another country.
1. Does anybody know of other nuclear power plants in Iran that are in some stage of completion?
2. It sounds like some here think the U.S./Israel plan to bomb the power plants and not just the uranium enrichment facilities. Am I reading that correctly? If so, why would the U.S./Israel want to deny electricity to Iran? A nuclear power plant is not going to help Iran develop a nuclear weapon. It would be the enrichment facilities that do that.
John Bolton explained this last night. They can get plutonium from a power
plant but once it starts up on 21st of this month ( 8 days away ) they cannot
attack it after because of the danger from fallout. So according to Bolton
Israel only have the next 8 days as a window of opportunity to attack this plant.
I cant imagine Israel would wait and attack everything else but this reactor later because
then Iran would definately retaliate sometime in the futue with its own internal source of plutonium so to me it seems like its this week or never ?
From what I've read, they are loading the fuel in 8 days, but it will take some six months for the plant to be up and running at full capacity. I presume there is a danger of fallout if they bomb the plant after the fuel is loaded but before the plant is running.
So they get plutonium from the fuel for the power plant. Is that enriched to the level needed for nuclear weapons? I'm thinking no, from all the arguments that "we are just making fuel for power plants, not for bombs". That implies the fuel for the power plants is not enriched enough for nukes. So my original question stands: what is the point of bombing a power plant if the objective is to deny Iran the ability to make a nuclear weapon? I've not read anywhere that the U.S. or Israel were including power plants in what they were concerned about.
But the 8 days deadline is pretty significant :-
" Russia says it will undertake a key step next week, when it will begin to load the Iranian light-water nuclear power plant in Bushehr with uranium fuel shipped by Russia.
“The fuel will be charged in the reactor on August 21. From this moment, Bushehr will be considered a nuclear installation,” Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov told AP. “This can be considered as the physical launch.”
and with regards to enrichment :-
" Experts warn the Bushehr reactor could produce a quarter ton of weapons grade plutonium per year. Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute said that would be enough for at least 30 atomic bombs a year."
Thanks for that. I didn't know. So - a pretty significant development.
I responded to two comments by Zina above. On my screen, my responses are squished into tiny columns on the right side of the screen. I'm going to repeat myself here, just so I know it is readable.
Zina makes the point that only the U.S. has a history of using nuclear weapons. My response was that it is important to note whether the U.S. used those weapons as an agressor or as a defender. No one has a logical basis on which to claim the world should be afraid of the U.S. as an agressor with nuclear weapons. We have never used such weapons as an aggressor.
Zina asks, where did the U.S. get the right to drop nuclear weapons on unarmed citizens. I asked, what right did the U.S. have to not drop the nuclear bombs, if doing that would end up saving more lives than were killed by the bombs.
Any discussion about the U.S. and the use of nuclear weapons that ignores these two points is not a logical, legitimate discussion. The effect of those bombs was horrendous. All admit that. All grieve for the innocents killed. However, all must also accept the possibility that the effect of not using those bombs could have been far more horrendous. You say you feel emotions for those killed by the nuclear bombs. If you are consistent, you must feel the same emotions for the increased slaughter that would have occurred had the bombs not been dropped. Do you? So which potential slaughter should you be feeling the most emotional about? The one that did occur? Or the much larger one that would have occurred had the bombs not been dropped? I'm not trying to be funny when I say I understand the cognitive dissonance that is generated by this question. Because it forces one to consider that a horrendous act, in the end, maybe was the lessor of two evils. For those who cannot hold this awful thought in their head, the simple way out is to claim that nothing of consequence would have happened if we hadn't dropped the bombs. That gives one the luxury of pretending that life doesn't force us to make awful, hard choices.
The Bush government invaded Iraq for a good geostrategical reason : the US wants to control energy ressources present in the Middle East Agence France-Presse reports that John Bolton, previous United States Ambassador to the U.N., says that there is only a three day window before the Bushehr nuclear plant becomes functional where Israel can bomb. Iran would end up with lots of radiation and harm if Israel waited until nuclear fuel was loaded to the plant’s core. Conventional wisdom suggests that Israel will not strike Bushehr, but Bolton and those of comparable mindset appear to be goading Israel toward war. Despite sanctions by the United States and the European Union, Iran's quest for nuclear power has continued.