2024-02-01T14:38:59+00:00
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/ Iranian official media revealed, on Thursday, that Iran has begun building four more nuclear power plants in the south of the country, with an expected total capacity of 5,000 megawatts, in addition to its only plant near the Iraqi border.
According to the official IRNA news agency, Iran aims to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear energy by 2041.
The country has one active nuclear power plant, a 1,000-megawatt plant that came online with Russian help in 2011. It is also building a 300-megawatt plant in oil-rich Khuzestan province, near the western border with Iraq.
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said last year that Iran had increased its production of weapons-grade uranium.
The agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in the report that Iran “has increased its production of highly enriched uranium in recent weeks, reversing a previous reduction in production from mid-2023,” according to an IAEA spokesman. Iran had previously slowed its rate of enrichment to 60 percent purity, a technical step just short of the 90 percent level for nuclear weapons.