Under the 1995 construction contract, the Bushehr reactor was slated to start operating in January 1999.
So, if all goes well from here on out, it will be only 12 1/2 years behind schedule.
Atomstroieksport, the Russian contractor, announced Friday that it had started reloading the fuel rods. The rods were all loaded last year, but, when a test run was made, a 30-year-old fuel pump that Iran had bought from Germany began shedding filings.
The Russians then said the reactor needed to be unloaded and the insides washed to get rid of all the loose filings.
The Russians said this was not a safety issue, that the loose filings didn’t threaten safe operations. But it said the filings could add to the wear and tear on the reactor and cause it to loose years off its life.
Only a week before the Russians said they had begun reloading the fuel, Majlis Deputy Hamid-Reza Katouzian, chairman of the Majlis Energy Committee, said the cleanup might delay startup of the plant for up to a year.
But Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said Saturday he expects the reactor to be turned back on between May 5 and 10. The Fars news agency, without naming a source, said the plant will produce its first electricity by early July. The Russians have not given any new startup dates.
The original loading of the fuel rods began October 26, so the program is now back to where it was 5 1/2 months ago.
Meanwhile, the Majlis announced it has set up a six-member committee to investigate the long delays. “We’ve spent a lot of money on this project and yet the Russians have reneged on their promises one after the other on the startup,” Deputy Gholam-Ali Meigoli-nejad told The Associated Press Friday.
No one, however, has said how much money Iran has spent on Bushehr. In 1995, the contract was described as being for $800 million. Some years later, a new contract was signed, which the Russians said totaled $1.2 billion. But no new figures have been given for almost a decade now.
As for the delays, the Russians have blamed part on sanctions, with some suppliers in Western Europe severing links over the years as dealing with Iran became a business liability for European companies.
But Russia has mainly blamed Iran for failing to make many payments on time, which prompted the Russians to down tools, and especially for Iran’s insistence that Russia use the structure built by the Germans and as much equipment already at the site from the 1970s work there by the original German contractor.
The Russians complained from the beginning that that would complicate, delay and add to the expense of the project over just starting from scratch.