Russia defies West and goes ahead with nuclear fuel sale

[cal04]

Russia defies West and goes ahead with nuclear fuel sale to Iran

RUSSIA is to begin supplying Iran with nuclear fuel early next year despite mounting concern in the West that this could accelerate Tehran’s plans to build a nuclear bomb.

Sergei Shmatko, head of Atomstroyexport, Russia’s state nuclear fuel exporter, said last week that preparations to send fuel to Iran would start next month and the first consignment was expected to reach the Islamic republic in early spring.

The announcement, at a time when Russia is asserting itself as an energy power, has caused anxiety in western countries which are trying to convince the Kremlin to end its nuclear co-operation with Tehran.

The concerns were strengthened yesterday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reported to have told a Kuwaiti envoy that Iran was ready to transfer its nuclear technology to neighbouring countries.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2508381,00.html

[BayCityProgressive]

1. Lovely

good thing Bush saw Putin's soul.

[nealmhughes]

2. Iran has Uranium. Russia has enrichment facilities and fuel fabrication technology.

Supposedly this is to get Iran to use Iranian Uranium and Russia to enrich it and manufacture the fuel rods.

I'll have to seek it out of my files, but it comes from Le Monde Diplomatique from last year or the year before.

This is viewed as a win/win situation by Teheran and Moscow -- Iran gets its reactors and shows the world it is not a third world country, and Russia gets a grip on proliferation efforts by Iran.

By the way, Brazil is enriching its own Uranium right now for power reactors, just as Iran is/was. Is anyone losing sleep over the Carioca Bomb?