Iran’s nuclear facilities are safe: Soltanieh

Nuclear power plants do not create greenhouse gasses, whereas fossil fuel power plants do, and this is one of their advantages, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the Mehr News Agency during an interview published on Wednesday. 

Three major nuclear accidents have occurred in the world over the past fifty years, namely, the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979, Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986, and Fukushima in Japan in 2011, he stated. 

The Fukushima accident was not due to the earthquake, since the power plants immediately stopped operating at the time of the tremor, as the Japanese had designed them to do in the event of such a natural disaster, but it was the tsunami, for which no safety precautions had been taken, that damaged the installations, Soltanieh added. 

He went on to say that Iran, in cooperation with the IAEA and its experts, is working on a safety project for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, and the cooperation will continue to ensure the safety of all the nuclear facilities in Iran. 

In conclusion, he stated that Iran’s nuclear activities would continue, under the supervision of highly skilled experts, since the Iranian parliament has ratified a directive stating that the government must produce 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power over the next 20 years.