Bušer: a worrying situation

The general director of the Russian state corporation Rosatom, Aleksej Lihačov, warned that the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran is facing growing threats due to frequent air attacks by the United States and Israel, according to The Moscow Times.

According to him, explosions can be heard just a few kilometers from the plant's physical security perimeter.

Lihačov specified that missile strikes, according to current information, are not directed at the plant itself, but at nearby military facilities, but he stressed that the escalation of the conflict directly threatens the safety of the site.

He warned that a potential hit on the facility could lead to the spread of radioactive materials in the surrounding area.

Due to air strikes, construction work on the plant's second and third blocks has been temporarily halted, while Russian specialists remain on site. Rosatom has so far evacuated 94 people who are not necessary for the operation of the plant, and evacuation of about another 200 employees is planned as soon as safety conditions are met.

Although Iranian state media reported that the city where the nuclear plant is located was targeted last Saturday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi stated that there are currently no indications that the nuclear facilities in Iran have been damaged or directly attacked.

Otherwise, in Bushehr there is one VVER-designed reactor in operation, although Siemens' reactor construction began at that site in the 1970s. That construction was halted after the Iranian Revolution, and the continuation of the construction was taken over by Russia, which installed a VVER reactor in the reactor building.

Although some of our media reported that there was an explosion near this power plant, those explosions were in the city of Bushehr, and there is no confirmation of explosions near or inside the plant itself.

Nevertheless, we must add that even so there are reasons for serious concern: if there is an external power supply disruption, the reactor is in serious danger. Because even when the reactor is scrammed (shut down), the fission products in the fuel rods continue to release a huge amount of heat – about 6% of the reactor's total thermal power – and that is a tremendous amount of power. Therefore, every reactor must have water pumped in and must be actively cooled even after shutdown because a cooling failure inevitably leads to reactor meltdown, which is considered one of the worst and most dangerous scenarios in the nuclear industry. Therefore every nuclear power plant has a complex and layered defense and several backup systems: electric motors and diesel generators with water cooling pumps.

What would be good in the Bushehr case is to bring the reactor into a state of cold shutdown, that is, to shut it down, and after some time remove the fuel and place it in the spent nuclear fuel pool. In that case the danger of an incident does not disappear completely, but it is significantly smaller.

But at this time it is not known whether the reactor in Bushehr is in operation or not.