Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant - Safety Concerns

Safety Concerns

The Center for Energy and Security Studies, a Moscow-based independent think tank, explained the construction delays of the plant as partly due to a "shortage of skilled Russian engineering and construction specialists with suitable experience". It also spoke of "frequent problems with quality and deadlines”. Aging equipment at the plant has also been a problem and, in February 2011, a 30-year-old German cooling pump broke, sending metal debris into the system. In 2010, the IAEA noted that the facility was understaffed.

Leaders from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have expressed fears that a serious nuclear accident at the Bushehr plant would spread radiation throughout the region. Bushehr is closer to six Arab capitals (Kuwait City, Riyadh, Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Muscat) than it is to Tehran. The government of Oman believes the plant presents no risk to Oman.

According to Kuwaiti geologist, Dr.Jassem al-Awadi, the plant is located at the junction of three tectonic plates. However the United States Geological Survey and NASA characterise the geology as near the boundary of two tectonic plates, the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate. The plant is designed to withstand without serious damage a magnitude 8 earthquake, and survive up to magnitude 9.

A 2011 Natural Resources Defense Council report that evaluated the seismic hazard to reactors worldwide, as determined by the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program data, placed Busheher within the second group of 36 reactors within high seismic hazard areas, at lower risk than 12 reactors within very high seismic hazard areas in Japan and Taiwan.

Iran is with Israel one of the two countries in the world with significant nuclear activities not to ratify the 1994 Convention on Nuclear Safety, a system of peer review and mutual oversight, and it has been suggested that nuclear safety in Iran could benefit from Iran signing the convention.

In October 2012 the plant had to be shut down to limit damage after stray bolts were found beneath the fuel cells, contradicted Iran's earlier assurances that nothing unexpected had happened and that removing nuclear fuel from the plant was just routine.

Two diplomats claimed anonymously to press-agency AP, that recent earthquakes in April and May 2013 had caused a big crack in a wall of at least one of the buildings, the building that contains the reactor core however had no visable damage to it. Although spokesmen in Tehran argued earlier that the nuclear facility in Bushehr had suffered no damage during these earthquakes. The claims made by the anonymous diplomats have been refuted by Rosatom.