Russia is helping Iran build the plant at Bushehr, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of the capital, Tehran. The NPP is being constructed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Sergei Shmatko, the head of Atomstroiexport, Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, said the supplementary agreement also stipulated a date for the plant's commissioning.
"We have signed a supplementary agreement to the contract for the construction of the Bushehr NPP," Shmatko said. "The agreement stipulates that the date for the power generating launch will be November 2007, and that the plant will be commissioned in September 2007."
Last Monday, Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency, told journalists on the sidelines of the 50th International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference in Vienna that the Bushehr NPP would be launched in November 2007.
"The Bushehr nuclear power plant will be commissioned in September 2007, and the power generating launch will take place in November 2007," Kiriyenko said.
At a meeting Tuesday with Mahmoud Janatian, a vice president of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Shmatko said the fuel would be delivered no later than six months prior to the plant's commissioning.
Atomstroiexport is building Bushehr's first power unit under a $1 billion contract signed by Russia and Iran in 1995. A supplemental agreement signed in 1998 stipulates that Atomstroiexport will complete construction of the plant on the basis of a turnkey arrangement.
Iran's vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, arrived in Moscow Monday for talks with Kiriyenko on the plant.
Traveling to Moscow Monday, Aghazadeh said he intended to propose that some of the work at Bushehr be carried out by Iranian specialists.
He also said the implementation of his proposal would help accelerate the plant's commissioning, adding that Iran was capable of completing its construction alone.
"Iranians can complete the construction of the Bushehr NPP on their own in the event the Russians fail to bring it online," Aghazadeh told Iranian news agency Fars.
