BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 4. Minimum $900 million has been saved over the past year by generating electricity at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Bushehr Province, located in the south of Iran, said Behrouz Kamalvandi, an official representative of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, at a meeting with university professors in Tehran on December 3, Trend reports.
According to him, while the Bushehr nuclear power plant was not operating, at least 13 million barrels of crude oil should have been consumed over the past year.
Kamalvandi also noted that the Bushehr nuclear power plant's operations prevented the release of about seven million tons of polluting gases into the environment per year.
Meanwhile, the first unit of Iran's Bushehr NPP began operation in 2011. The Russian nuclear company transferred the unit's operation to an Iranian company in 2013. Since 2013, this unit has produced a maximum of 1,000 megawatt hours of electricity. In 10 years, electricity production at Bushehr NPP has amounted to more than 65 billion kilowatt-hours.
To note, construction of Bushehr NPP units 2 and 3 began in 2017 on an area of 50 ha. Once operational, each of these units can generate 1,057 megawatts of electricity. The commissioning of these two units will save 10 million barrels of crude oil or 1.6 bcm of gas per year and prevent the release of seven million tons of polluting gases into the environment.