Iran picks firms to hunt for N-plant sites

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation signed deals on Tuesday with six local companies tasking them to hunt for potential sites for new nuclear power plants, the official news agency IRNA reported.

“These six domestic companies have been given 13 months to find appropriate locations to build new atomic power plants,” the director of nuclear energy production, Ahmad Fayaz Bakhsh, was quoted as saying.

“After finalising the locations, construction of the power plants can begin,” he said, without mentioning how many would be built.

The announcement came with Iran under intense international pressure over its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a process used to manufacture nuclear fuel but which can also be diverted to make the core of an atomic bomb.

Iran, OPEC’s number two oil exporter, has vehemently denied Western allegations it is seeking to build nuclear weapons and insists it only wants to produce energy for its growing population.