Russia will deliver its next fuel shipment to Iran's nuclear power plant, Bushehr, a year after the plant is launched, the president of Russia's nuclear fuel producer TVEL said on Wednesday.

"The next fuel delivery will be needed a year after the launch of the reactor; if the launch takes place this year, the fuel will be shipped in 2011," Yury Olenin told journalists in Bratislava.

Olenin explained that the nuclear power plant needs two fuel canisters a year. The first one was sent to Iran in 2007 and the second has already been produced in Novosibirsk, Siberia, he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last month that Iran's first nuclear power plant, Bushehr, will be launched this year.

The launch date has been postponed many times for financial and technical reasons, because of Iranian claims that Russia was reluctant to finish the facility due to UN sanctions, and following suspicions from many world leaders that the launch was part of a covert nuclear weapons program.

The president of TVEL said on Wednesday that Russia was delivering the fuel shipment under the framework of its contract with Iran.

"We are always in contact with our Iranian colleagues and agree on prices which change in line with world uranium prices and the cost of its enrichment," Olenin said.

The construction of Iran's first nuclear power plant began in the country's south in 1975 by German companies. However, the firms stopped work after a U.S. embargo was imposed on high-technology supplies to Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent U.S. Embassy siege in Tehran.

Russia signed a contract with Iran in February 1998 to complete the plant.