China will soon join Russian in helping Iran build nuclear power plants. PHOTO: Harvard Law Blog.

China has promised to partner with Iran to construct nuclear power plants in the country, according to Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

At a meeting dubbed “An Analysis of the Lausanne Statement,” Kamalvandi noted that Iran “plans to produce at least 190,000 SWUs (Separate Work Units) of nuclear fuel at the industrial scale,” and that they were even contemplating increasing that number to 1,000,000 SWUs, “which will be needed to fuel 5 power plants like Bushehr.”

In order to realize this goal, Kamalvandi noted that, “this is the reason why we have inked an agreement with the Russians to construct two nuclear power plants for the generation of electricity, while the Chinese will also enter this arena soon.”

He also said that Iran was planning to build small nuclear power plants around the rims of the Persian Gulf, for the purpose of desalinating water, according to semi-official state news agency Fars, saying that “construction of such power plants are on the agenda and will be materialized in the next few years.”

Kamalvandi’s comments come just days after Iran and world powers announced a framework agreement aimed at curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Last December, Kamalvandi announced that the AEOI had started building two new nuclear power plants in Bushehr, in cooperation with the Russians. “We have entered the executive phase of the construction of these two nuclear power plants based on the contract signed between Tehran and Moscow in March [2014] to construct the plants,” he said.