Iran picks firms to hunt for nuclear plant sites

Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation signed deals on Tuesday with six local companies tasking them to hunt for potential sites for new nuclear power plants, the official news agency IRNA reported."These six domestic companies have been given 13 months to find appropriate locations to build new atomic power plants," the director of nuclear energy production, Ahmad Fayaz Bakhsh, was quoted as saying."After finalising the locations, construction of the power plants can begin," he said, without mentioning how many would be built.The announcement came with Iran under intense international pressure over its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a process used to manufacture nuclear fuel but which can also be diverted to make the core of an atomic bomb.Iran, OPEC's number two oil exporter, has vehemently denied Western allegations it is seeking to to build nuclear weapons and insists it only wants to produce energy for its growing population.A Russian contractor is currently building Iran's first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr, but completion has been repeatedly delayed.Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's atomic agency, was quoted as saying on August 8 that Bushehr was expected to start up by the end of the year.Among the six chosen to hunt for sites is Khatam-ol-Anbia, the vast business arm of Iran's ideological Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps which is under US and EU sanctions for links with nuclear proliferation activities.Fayaz Bakhsh said that four foreign companies-two Russian, one from Canada and a Swiss firm-had joined 58 domestic bidders for the contract. In May 2007, Iran said it had started building a 360-megawatt nuclear power plant, also in the south of the country, using indigenous technology.