The governor of Bushehr announced today that the Bushehr Nuclear Power Station will soon begin production, with an opening ceremony that will include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, representing Russia, either Dimitri Medvedev or Vladimir Putin.
IRNA reports that Governor Mohammad Hossein Jahanbakhsh said: “Bushehr Nuclear Power Station has reached the point of experimental exploitation thanks to the hard work of domestic specialists and the cooperation of Russian experts.”
The Bushehr plant had been previously scheduled to resume operation last year. However, last February the injected fuel had to be removed due to technical difficulties.
In March, Atomstroy Export Company, the Russian contractors building the nuclear plant, announced that they had begun re-injecting fuel into the heart of the reactor.
The news was later confirmed by the head of the Bushehr Plant, Hossein Desrakhshandeh, who said refueling had started after “several examinations and complete assurances.”
Parliament has formed a committee to look into what caused the launch delay. Last month it reported that it would have been more feasible for Iran to build a nuclear plant from scratch rather than try to complete the Bushehr Nuclear power Plant, which was first started in 1975 in cooperation with the German company Siemens.
The Siemens project was abandoned after the 1979 Revolution and then picked up by the Russian company in 1997. Completion has been repeatedly delayed for various reasons.
According to a number of experts, the most recent delay was caused by the Stuxnet computer virus, which The New York Times reported was created by Israel and the U.S. to infect Iran’s industrial computer systems.
