Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom has started practical work on the construction of units 2 and 3 at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, Rosatom director general Alexei Likhachev told the 62nd IAEA General Conference in Vienna on 18 September.
Iran and Russia signed an agreement to build the two new units at Bushehr in November 2014. The ceremony laying the first stone for construction of stage II of Bushehr (units 2 and 3) took place in September 2016, and first concrete for Bushehr 2 is planned for the third quarter of 2019.
Construction of unit 2 will take place from 2016 to 2024 and work on Bushehr 3 is scheduled to be completed in 2026. The total capacity of the two VVER-1000 power units will be 2100MWe. Rosatom’s ASE group began preparing the entire site for the construction in Autumn 2017.
Currently, unit 1 at Bushehr us the only operating commercial nuclear unit in the Middle East. The 915MWe VVER-1000 was supplied by Russia and began commercial operation in September 2013. Rosatom said earlier that the two new reactors are expected to cost about $10bn.
Photo: Bushehr 1 started commercial operations in September 2013 (Source: Rosatom)
