and finally began sending electricity into Iranian homes—but without any fanfare.
The announcement of the long-awaited—and long-delayed—development was made by the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, not by a senior official, and handled as if it were a routine action.
Spokesman Hamid Khadem Qaemi said the link to the national grid was made at 11:29 p.m., Saturday, September 3. He said the Bushehr plant was operating at 60 megawatts of its designed 1,000-megawatt capacity.
He said the power will be gradually increased and a formal ceremony would be held September 12 when power generation of 400 megawatts was expected to be achieved.
AEOI Deputy Director Mohammad Ahmadian said full power was expected to be reached in late November—but since all such projections have proved false in the past, few were making any bets on that time frame.
Nonetheless, the plant, which was started by the German firm Kraftwerk Union in 1975, was now sending power into the national grid, a real and major achievement.
Construction of the plant was well advanced when Iran was swept by the revolution on 1979. The revolutionaries halted all work. They described the project as one of the Shah’s wasteful “prestige” projects. They also said it was downright dangerous to build a plant near Bushehr where three tectonic plates joined.
As with so many of the Shah’s programs that the revolutionary government criticized and canceled, the new regime later decided the nuclear power program wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It invited Kraftwerk Union, now owned by Siemens, back into Iran. But the German government squelched that. In the early 1990s, Irant approached numerous foreign governments seeking their aid. Finally, in 1995, Russia signed a contract to build the plant and have it operating by January 1999.
The linkage to the national grid in September 2011 means the Russians were 12 years and eight months late. What was supposed to take 48 months took 200 months instead—an overrun of more than 300 percent.
As for cost, the initial contract was for $800 million. That was rewritten in the late 1990s and then totaled $1.2 billion. No revised figures have been given by either Iran or Russia in more than a decade.
The Russians said the single biggest problem causing the delays was that the Islamic Republic insisted the Russians put their reactor in the German reactor building that had almost been completed when work stopped in 1979. The Russians said that was impractical because Russian reactors had a different design than German reactors. Some said Iran was insisting that Russia put a square peg in a round hole. The Russians said they had to do considerable redesign work to make their reactor fit. They repeatedly said it would be faster and easier just to start from scratch.
The plant is located on the shore of the Persian Gulf about 17 kilometers southeast of Bushehr between two fishing villages. All discussion of the plant’s location in an active seismic zone—discussion that was very vocal under the Shah—has been squelched by the Islamic Republic. No mention is made in the media.
No one explained why there was no ceremony or advance announcement for the linking to the national electrical grid.
The regime has adopted a multitude of projects that it condemned and canceled as among the Shah’s wasteful prestige projects.
The first such project to be rehabilitated was the Tehran Metro. Only six months after the revolutionaries canceled it, a study that the revolutionaries themselves made of Tehran’s traffic problems concluded there could be no solution without a major subway system in the capital.
Perhaps the oddest project to be resurrected was the superhighway from Tehran to the Caspian. It was rightfully denounced by the revolutionaries as primarily a benefit for the wealthy who drive to the Caspian shores for their vacations. It was hugely expensive because it involved punching long tunnels through mountains in order to shorten the drive. But that project has been revived. It is now described as useful because it will promote trade with Central Asia, although the route is still from Tehran straight north through very difficult terrain to the Caspian rather than over an easier route that would be more direct to Central Asia.