Iran Opens Its First Nuclear Power Plant

TEHRAN — Thirty-six years after construction began under the shah, Iran finally opened its first nuclear power plant at a ceremony on Saturday.

Attended by senior officials from Iran and Russia, which helped build the station through years of concern by the United States and other Western nations that Iran was using its civilian program to mask a plan to build a bomb, the ceremony marked the beginning of the transfer of low-enriched uranium fuel rods from a storage site into the plant.

Officials of both countries said Saturday’s events signified the opening, not the startup, of the plant near Bushehr, in southern Iran, as a working nuclear plant.

“This is a special day for both Russian and Iranian specialists,” the chief of Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear power company, Sergei Kiriyenko, said, shaking hands and smiling with his Iranian counterparts, in television reports broadcast in Russia.

And it is one sure to upset United States diplomats who had encouraged Russia to delay the opening, though they have not objected to the project as it could be seen as helping to bring Iran’s nuclear program fully under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency.