Iran should generate between 8% and 12% of its electricity from nuclear power given its installed generation capacity of around 100,000 megawatts, a senior official at the country’s atomic energy agency said on Sunday.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said expanding nuclear power plants was a necessity for the country to ensure long-term energy security.
“Development of nuclear power plants is essential for the country, and at a minimum we need further expansion of such facilities to guarantee energy security,” Kamalvandi said at a meeting of the Iran-Russia Joint Chamber of Commerce attended by business representatives, government officials and a delegation from Russia’s Tatarstan region.
He described Russia as one of the world’s leading builders of nuclear power plants and said it remained an important partner for Iran in the sector.
Kamalvandi said the future of nuclear energy was moving toward small reactors, adding that such technologies could eventually be used in aircraft. He said Iran possessed strong human resources in the field and was working with Russia on the deployment of small reactor technology.
He also called for greater private-sector participation in nuclear projects, saying investors may be reluctant to enter large-scale projects in their early stages but could become interested once projects are 70% to 80% complete, with initial funding provided by the government and the National Development Fund.
Separately, Kamalvandi said Iran had made significant progress in cancer treatment and radiopharmaceutical production and planned to bring several major projects in those fields into operation this year and in the coming years.