Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 10
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant will produce six billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity following the recent fuel change, the director of the NPP, Hossein Ghaffari said.
After the fuel change and overhaul completed, the power plant got again connected to the country's electricity network last month with full capacity (1,000 megawatts), Ghaffari said, Tasnim news agency reported.
He further said that the power plant is planned to produce six billion kWh of electricity during current fiscal year (started March 20).
The Iranian official further said that the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) confirmed the safety of the Bushehr power plant, following a 16-day study last year.
Ghaffari added that 22 Wano experts from France, Russia and Hong Kong evaluated the performance of the power plant based on the 2013 standards in nuclear industry and confirmed its safety.
Bushehr NPP which was inaugurated in September 2013 has a capacity of producing 1,000 megawatts of electricity. The power plant was scheduled to produce up to 5 billion megawatt hours of electricity per year, which is about 2 percent of country's total electricity production.
The core of the Bushehr reactor is composed of 163 fuel assemblies of which 54 should be changed every year.
Supplying the fuel of Iran's only nuclear power plant - Bushehr, is guaranteed by Russia for 10 years. Russia delivered 82 tons of nuclear fuel in 2008 and 30 more tons in May 2011 to Iran. This amount meets the Bushehr NPP's fuel needs for four years.