国际英语新闻：Iran ready to launch Bushehr nuclear power plant: official

TEHRAN, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian official said Thursday that the country is ready to launch its first Bushehr nuclear power plant, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Chief of Bushehr nuclear power plant workshop, Mahmoud Jafari, said in Bushehr that the main tests and inspections of the power plant have been successfully carried out during the last six months, the report said.

Double-checks, "installations and montage stage is completed and we are about to launch the power plant," Jafari was quoted as saying without referring to the specific time.

In July, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's state-run atomic energy corporation Rosatom, said that preparations for the launch of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant are proceeding as scheduled and the plant's first stage will be finished late August.

Iran handed over the Bushehr project, started by German firm Siemens in the 1970s, to Russia in 1995. The launch of project has been postponed repeatedly in recent years.