updated calendar shows it is already five weeks behind schedule!
The plan announced in late August called for the 163 fuel rods to be fully installed by about October 1. On September 29, however, Ali-Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said the loading of the rods would be finished around November 7—five weeks behind the schedule announced six weeks previously.
Salehi said the first electricity generated by the Bushehr reactor would enter the national grid “two or three months” after that, which would mean some time between early January and early February, versus the December launch announced six weeks ago.
A month ago, Salehi said there were delays because of Bushehr’s severe hot weather and resulting safety concerns which led to the loading being done at night. But the temperatures in Bushehr should not have been a surprise to anyone and should have been taken into consideration in laying out the schedule from the start.
On Thursday, when Salehi revealed the startup was five weeks behind schedule, he gave no explanation. Then on Monday, he said there had been a small leak in the reactor that delayed work “for a few days.” Significantly, he did not say what had leaked. “During the process of washing [the reactor], a small leak was observed in a pool next to the reactor and was curbed. This leak caused the activities to be delayed for a few days. The leak has been fixed and the core of the reactor is now working properly,” he said.
He denied that the Stuxnet computer worm had anything to do with the delays.
Virtually nothing about the plant has operated as scheduled. The contract with Russia called for starting work in January 1995 and finishing it in January 1999—a four-project project. If electricity does start to flow next January, the reactor will have become a 16-year project—a 300 percent schedule overrun.
When the reactor is up and running full speed, it will produce 1,000 megawatts, adding about 2 1/2 percent to the Iran’s electricity supply. When the reactor is started, Iran will become the 30th country in the world to generate electricity via nuclear power.
Operating Bushehr will save Iran 11 million barrels of crude a year that would otherwise be devoted to power generation. That is the equivalent of three days of Iranian crude oil production. Iran has long argued that reducing the domestic use of oil and making it available for export was a key rationale for building Bushehr.
As for the cost, no figures have been announced since the late 1990s when the original $800 million contract was revised and Russia said it then totaled about $1.2 billion.
The Russian ITAR-TASS news agency, after speaking to Russians working on the plant, published the following schedule August 21.
• The 163 fuel rods were then being moved physically into the reactor chamber and in about eight days would start being loaded into the reactor itself. That operation should be completed around October 1. (That is now November 7.)
• In November, the reactor would be turned on and operated at the minimum level of 1 percent.
• In December, the reactor was to be brought up to 50 percent of capacity and the first electricity was to enter the national grid. (That is now some time between early January and early February.) While the Russians said in August the link to the grid would come in December, Ali Shirzadian, the spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, said at that time that the grid link would come by early November.
• The power unit will be gradually sped up until it reaches 100 percent of its design capacity, which was announced for March.