Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Ali-Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization announced Saturday.
This was a rather surprising announcement—especially given that Salehi himself said two weeks earlier that it would take another six weeks to complete the installation. All sorts of dates and timelines have been announced since the process of loading the fuel rods began in late August.
Back then, the Russians said the process would take about six weeks and be completed around October 1. In reality, it took 14 weeks—an overrun of 130 percent. But that’s pretty good for the Russians, who contracted in 1995 to complete the power plant in 48 months by January 1999.
The power plant will now be at least 12 years late—a 300 percept overrun. Salehi said Saturday that he expected the first power from the Bushehr plant to be inserted into the national grid sometime between late December and late January. But that figure was odd.
It meant it would take a minimum of one month from completion of the fuel rod installation until the first electricity would enter the national grid. But, back in September, Salehi himself said it would take a minimum of two months after completion of the fuel rod installation to send the first power into the national grid. Clearly, all the numbers are soft—very, very soft.