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Bushehr N-plant fully operational in 2012

16 December 2011 02:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Officials of Ukraine’s Energoatom Company have announced that Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant will become fully operational in 2012, APA reports quoting Press TV.

The company’s specialists, who have participated in testing and commissioning the Bushehr plant by the regional center of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), added that the plant would reach 100 percent of its power-generation capacity in the middle of 2012.

They noted that Bushehr nuclear plant is currently operating at 50-percent capacity, Fars News Agency quoted a RIA Novosti report on Thursday.

"In the next stages it will reach 75 and then 100 percent of its capacity. The plant is reportedly due for full power generation in the first half of 2012," the report said.

Representatives of Russia, the Ukraine, Armenia, Hungary, France and Belgium were present in testing the plant by WANO regional center.

The pre-commissioning of the plant was done at Iran’s request on October 10-24, 2011.

The Bushehr plant was officially launched by the Iranian officials on Monday, September 12, and started by generating electricity at 40 percent of its capacity.

The 1,000-megawatt plant had been already connected to the country’s national power grid with the power of 60 MW on September 3, 2011. It reached the capacity of 190 MW on September 27, and a day later it improved its capacity to 300 MW.

The plant gained 50 percent of its nominal power on October 7 as it reached the capacity of 420 MW.

The nuclear power plant is located southeast of the city of Bushehr along the Persian Gulf.

Initial construction of the facility began in 1975 by German companies, but the work was stopped following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In 1995, Iran and Russia reached an agreement to complete the project, but power generation was delayed several times due to a number of technical and financial problems.