FNA- Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi underlined AEOI's resolve to speed up construction process of two new nuclear power plants in Bushehr province in Southern Iran by paying the first installment by the end of the current Iranian year (will end March 20, 2017).

"Iran's new nuclear power plant projects will take a decade to complete," Salehi said on Saturday.

The AEOI chief noted that the fist power plant in Bushehr has been operating by years now, and said, "The contracts have already been signed upon the government�s approval to build two new ones."

In early September, an official with Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom said that the construction of the second nuclear reactor at the Bushehr power plant would begin in the third quarter of 2019.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the second and third nuclear reactors at the site took place in early September.

Valery Limarenko, the head of Rosatom's engineering division, told reporters in Bushehr that they planned to start laying the reactor's concrete base in July-September 2019. Russia and Iran signed a contract for the construction of two 1,000-megawatt reactors in November 2014. The project is estimated at $10 billion and will take ten years to complete.