 In August 1974, the Shah said, "Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn... We envision producing, as soon as possible, 23,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity using nuclear plants".In 1975, German , a joint venture of Siemens AG and AEG-Telefunken, signed a contract worth US$4–6 billion to build the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant.The work was begun in the same year.