Iran loads fuels into first nuclear power plant

BUSHEHR, Iran - Iran began loading fuel into its first nuclear power plant Saturday, a potent symbol of its growing regional sway and its rejection of international sanctions designed to prevent it from building a nuclear bomb.

Television showed live pictures of Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and his Russian counterpart watching a fuel rod assembly being prepared for insertion into the reactor near the Gulf city of Bushehr.

"Despite all the pressures, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Salehi told a news conference.

Russia designed and built the plant and will supply fuel. To ease nuclear proliferation concerns, it will take back spent rods that could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium.

Washington has criticized Moscow for pushing ahead with Bushehr despite Iranian defiance over its nuclear program.

But U.S. State Department spokesman Darby Holladay said Washington did not view the reactor as a proliferation risk, partly because of Russia's role in providing fuel and taking back spent rods.

"Russia's support for Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," Holladay said.

Moscow supported a UN Security Council resolution in June that imposed a fourth round of sanctions because of fears, backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran's uranium enrichment program is aimed at developing nuclear arms.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chose yesterday to tell a meeting of university professors of plans to shoot satellites to altitudes of 700 km, then 1,000 km - certain to add to Western concerns about Iran's development of missile technology.

The fueling up of Bushehr is a milestone on Iran's path to harness technology that it says will reduce consumption of its abundant fossil fuels. It says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, and aimed at allowing it to export more oil and gas and prepare for the day when mineral riches dry up.