The Times Of Israel - Iran’s sole nuclear power plant underwent an unexplained temporary emergency shutdown, state TV reported on Sunday.
An official from the state electric energy company, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, said on a talk show that the Bushehr plant shutdown began on Saturday and would last “for three to four days.”
He said that power outages could result. He did not elaborate, but this is the first time that Iran has reported an emergency shutdown of the plant, located in the southern port city of Bushehr. It went online in 2011 with help from Russia. Iran is required to send spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Russia, as a nuclear nonproliferation measure.
In March, nuclear official Mahmoud Jafari said that the plant could stop working, since Iran cannot procure parts and equipment for it from Russia due to banking sanctions imposed by the US in 2018.
Bushehr is fueled by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran, and is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported shutdown.
Construction on Bushehr, on the coast of the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf, began under Iran’s shah in the mid-1970s. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the plant was repeatedly targeted in the Iran-Iraq war. Russia later completed the construction of the facility.
The plant, which sits....READ MORE
The Times of Israel is an Israel-based, primarily English-language online newspaper launched in 2012. It was co-founded by journalist David Horovitz, who is also the founding editor, and American hedge fund manager Seth Klarman. It covers "developments in Israel, the Middle East and around the Jewish world."