TEHRAN, Dec 30: Iran on Sunday insisted its first nuclear power station would be launched in the summer of 2008, despite the plant’s Russian constructors saying it will not go on line until the end of the year.

“The Bushehr nuclear power station will launch at a capacity of 50 per cent next summer,” said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, quoted by the state news agency IRNA.

A Russian contractor is finishing the construction of the much-delayed 1,000MW plant in the southern city of Bushehr. Moscow has also agreed to deliver the nuclear fuel required by the facility.

A spokeswoman for the Russian contractor Atomstroiexport said earlier this month that it would take at least a year to launch the power station.

“We can predict that the Bushehr station will be launched no earlier than the end of 2008 due to the current situation,” Irina Yesipova said on Dec 20.

The Bushehr project has suffered a series of delays since it was started in the 1970s under the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi using engineers from German engineering firm Siemens.

It was shelved in the first decade after the 1979 Islamic revolution but then resurrected in 1995 when Russia agreed to build and fuel the plant. Even then the deadline for the station’s launch was repeatedly put back.—AFP