Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in the southern namesake city that was temporarily shut down for technical overhaul and refueling outage has resumed operation, head of the facility said.
"The plant will operate for 300 days and is projected to generate to 6.5 billion kilowatt hours of power," Reza Banazadeh was quoted as saying by IRNA.
The plant produced 6.6 billion kWh of electricity in 2019.
The plant was shut down for maintenance and refueling for 90 days in March (when electricity demand is low).
The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel.
“Detecting and replacing faulty and worn-out parts was undertaken after old nuclear feedstock was moved to a secure location," he said.
Thirteen experts from eight countries checked the plant in March and approved its compliance with international standards.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, has said the plant's utilization factor was 85.3% in 2017 -- up 9% compared to the year before.
Utilization factor or use factor is the ratio of the time that a piece of equipment is in use compared to the total time that it could be in use.
Iran’s sole nuclear reactor has generated over 43 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since 2011 that is equivalent to energy produced by burning 55 million barrels of crude.
The Bushehr plant is the first civilian nuclear power facility in the Middle East and operates under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was built with Russian assistance.
The plant accounts for 1 gigawatt of Iran’s total power generation capacity at 60 GW.
