“We expect serious results by the end of the year, but the launch itself will not take place,” Shmatko said, quoted by Interfax and RIA-Novosti.

In July the chief of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom had said that the power plant, located in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr, would go into service by the end of 2009.

Russia has pressed ahead with the Bushehr project despite Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear energy programme, which the United States and its allies fear is aimed at acquiring an atomic bomb.