"Under instructions from the president of Iran, Iranian experts are beginning to build our first nuclear power plant with a capacity of 360 MW," the ISNA news agency quoted Gholamreza Aghazadeh as saying.
He said Iran has mastered nuclear technologies and needs no further foreign assistance in the nuclear sphere.
Iranian media reported in late February that Iran's 2007 budget starting March 21 envisions $1.3 billion for the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Tehran earlier said Iran plans to use nuclear power to meet 10% of its energy needs in the next 25 years.
In early 2005, Iran's parliament ratified a bill on NPP construction with a total power of 20,000 megawatts in the country.
In December 2005, the Islamic Republic's government decided to start building a 360-MW NPP in the province of Khuzestan, with Tehran planning to complete construction in seven years.
Russian specialists are completing the construction of Iran's first NPP in the southern city of Bushehr, a project worth $1 billion under a contract signed in 1995, but Iran has an outstanding debt for the construction services, so the construction could take longer than previously expected.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in December imposing sanctions on Iran.
Russia, a key economic partner of Iran, has consistently supported the Islamic Republic's right to nuclear power under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has resisted the imposition of harsh sanctions.
The Bushehr facility, scheduled to be commissioned in the second half of 2007, after the original date at the end of 2006 was delayed, has been a source of international dispute, with the United States and other Western countries, raising concerns that Iran could use the project as part of a covert weapons program.
Iran has consistently denied that its nuclear program has military goals.
