Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in the southern namesake city, which was temporarily shut down for technical overhaul and refueling, has resumed operation and added 1,000 megawatts to Iran’s electricity output capacity, the head of Iran Grid Management Company, an Energy Ministry subsidiary, said.
“Maintenance of the plant was completed on Jan. 10, following which the facility started to operate for 300 days to generate 7 billion kilowatt-hours of power,” Mostafa Rajabi-Mashhadi was also quoted as saying by Barq News.
The plant was shut down for refueling last October (when electricity demand was low), whereby the depleted fuel was replaced with new fuel to produce energy from nuclear fission reactions more efficiently.
“The detection and replacement of faulty and worn-out parts were undertaken after old nuclear feedstock was moved to a secure location," he said.
Iran’s sole nuclear reactor is the first civilian nuclear power facility of the Middle East, which 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 that currently stands at 85 GW.
According to Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, construction operations at the second and third units of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant are making headway.
“Concrete pouring work at the site of the second unit is complete,” he announced.
The construction of the first unit of the plant in Bushehr was carried out with the help of Russia. It came on stream in 2011 and reached full capacity (1,000 MW) the following year.
The first unit of Iran’s sole nuclear power plant generated over 50 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from 2011 to 2020, which is equivalent to the energy produced by burning more than 60 million barrels of crude oil.
In 2014, Iran signed a contract with the Russian company Rosatom and its subsidiaries to build two reactors on the same site. The second unit of the plant is scheduled to come on stream in five years, while the third will be finished in seven years, following which nuclear power generation capacity will stand at 3,000 MW.
The second and third units will each have a capacity of 1,057 MW. Over $10 billion have been allocated to the two units.
