Construction of Equipment for 'Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Two' Begins in Russia

The head of the company constructing 'Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Two' announced on Tuesday, June 19, that the construction of equipment for this plant, including the 'core melt trap' (melt containment vessel), has commenced. According to the Russian news agency 'Sputnik', Valery Limarenko, the head of the NIAEP company, stated that the contract for the construction of the 'core melt trap' for the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Two has been signed and the construction of this device has started. He emphasized that the company is also set to sign contracts for the construction of other equipment for the plant. It was previously announced that the 'core melt trap' for the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant would be delivered to Iran in 2018. The Russian company NIAEP, part of the Rosatom group, is responsible for the design, construction, and safety testing of the plant, with the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant being one of its projects. Rosatom had previously reported that the construction and installation operations for Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Two officially began on March 14, 2017, and representatives of the company participated in the official inauguration ceremony of this project. Reports indicate that the implementation of this project is expected to take more than 10 years. In November 2014, Iran and Russia signed two contracts for the construction of units 2 and 3 of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Iranian officials announced last year that the first installment of this contract had been paid. Russian sources have reported that the investment for the construction of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant Two is estimated at $11 billion. However, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, stated last November that the cost for constructing two new nuclear reactors in Bushehr would be 30 trillion tomans, about $8 billion, and that after the commissioning of these two reactors, the Bushehr plant would supply five to six percent of Iran's electricity needs. Russia launched the Bushehr plant in September 2011, and its operation has been halted several times since then. The plant is still not operating at full capacity. The annual report from the Ministry of Energy shows that over 282 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were produced last year, with the Bushehr plant contributing just over 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for less than one percent of Iran's electricity production. According to this report, the Bushehr plant has been operating at less than one-third of its final capacity. Iran plans to construct 20 nuclear power plants in the future, with four of them being in Bushehr. The allocation of at least $8 billion for the construction of two new reactors in Bushehr comes at a time when Salehi stated in a television program last October that about $7 billion had been spent on Iran's nuclear program over the past 25 years. Critics of Iran's nuclear program argue that the costs of this program are many times higher than this figure, and Ahmad Shirzad, a representative from Isfahan in the sixth parliament, previously stated that the costs of Iran's nuclear program have not been transparent and that the parliament has not been informed about these expenses.