MOSCOW. June 6 (Interfax) - The first nuclear power plant in Iran will soon be connected to the power grid, Atomstroyexport President Alexander Glukhov said. Atomstroyexport is the general contractor in the Bushehr NPP project.
"The Bushehr NPP reached the minimal controllable output on May 8. Connection to the power grid will come next. Hopefully, we will do that soon," he said in an interview with the newspaper Strana Rosatom.
Iran planned to start using the nuclear power plant in early April 2011, but declared suspended operation of the reactor due to technical reasons in late February. A cooling pump was damaged and metal chips might have polluted the reactor. Fuel assemblies were removed and washed and the reactor hull was cleaned before the fuel was put inside the reactor again in early April.
The construction of the Bushehr NPP of 1,000 megawatt on the Gulf shore was started by German specialists in the 1970s but frozen. Russia's Atomstroyexport continued the works in the 1990s.