The 11-ton consignment of enriched uranium arrived at the light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday morning, and the remainder of the fuel will arrive in three separate shipments in coming weeks, the television reported.
"Of 82 tons of initial fuel needed for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, 55 tons have been shipped to Iran so far," the television report said.
Iran
received the fourth shipment of nuclear fuel from
Russia
on Sunday. The first shipment arrived on Dec. 17 after months of dispute between the two countries, allegedly over delayed construction payments for the reactor.
Iran
has said Bushehr, the country's first nuclear reactor, will begin operating in the summer of 2008, producing half its 1,000-megawatt capacity of electricity.
Tehran
heralded the first shipment as a victory, saying it proved its nuclear program was peaceful, not a cover for weapons development as claimed by the
U.S.
and some of its allies.
The
U.S.
initially opposed Russian participation in building the Bushehr reactor and supplying it with fuel, but reversed its position about a year ago to obtain
Moscow
's support for the first set of U.N. sanctions against
Iran
.
Washington
was also influenced by
Iran
's agreement to return spent nuclear fuel from the reactor back to
Russia
to ensure it doesn't extract plutonium to make atomic bombs.
Russia
's decision to ship nuclear fuel to
Iran
follows a
U.S.
intelligence report released last month that concluded
Tehran
had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and hadn't resumed it since.
Iran
says it never had a weapons program.
It also came after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said
Iran
had been truthful about its past uranium enrichment activities.
The
U.S.
and
Russia
have said the supply of nuclear fuel means
Iran
has no need to continue its own uranium enrichment program - a process that can provide fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb.
Iran
has insisted it would continue enriching uranium because it needed to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it was building in the southwestern town of
Darkhovin
.
Iranian officials have said they plan to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next two decades.