Azernews.Az

Operations at the Bushehr nuclear power plant have been halted again until February 28 to enable repairs of the turbine generator, a close source to the plant told RIA Novosti news agency.

"During the examination conducted by the IAEA at Bushehr NPP on Feb. 16-17, Iran informed the agency that the reactor had been stopped," a report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran said.

"Iran is going to delay the transfer of the Bushehr NPP until we have complete confidence that all the station's technical problems are addressed," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said earlier. Salehi said that Russian experts used the most advanced technology in its construction.

Bushehr's construction was started by Germany's Siemens before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah, and it was taken over by Russian engineers in the 1990s. An agreement was signed between the governments of Russia and Iran on the construction of nuclear power plants in August 1992 and a contract was signed in January 1995 to complete construction of the station's first power generating unit.

Bushehr's actual launch began under the control of the IAEA on August 21, 2010, when delivery of nuclear fuel was made in the station's reactor department. In May 2011, work was carried out on the power unit which maintains the nuclear steam supply system at the minimum controllable capacity level.