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Mohammed Eslami, head of Iran's nuclear agency (archive photo)
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HO / AFP
Iran says it has started building a new nuclear power plant.
As the head of the Iranian nuclear authority, Mohammed Eslami, said on state television on Saturday, the Karun nuclear power plant in the south-western province of Khuzestan, which was planned before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, should have an output of 300 megawatts after its completion.
Construction is expected to take seven years and cost the equivalent of 1.4 to 1.9 billion euros.
So far, Iran has only one nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which has an output of 1,000 megawatts.
The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was intended to limit Iran's nuclear program and ensure that the country would not build nuclear weapons.
It was negotiated by the USA, China, Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain and Iran.
Under then-US President Donald Trump, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and imposed new sanctions on Tehran.
As a result, Iran gradually withdrew from its obligations under the agreement.
At the Fordo nuclear plant, for example, Iran started producing uranium enriched to 60 percent again.
The threshold set in the nuclear agreement is 3.67 percent.
Uranium enriched to around 90 percent is required to build atomic bombs.
ktz/afp