According to Russian information and news agency RIA Novosti, the physical start-up of Busher NPP has been postponed for one year at least, till autumn 2008, Head of Energoprogress, one of subcontractors of the construction of Busher NPP in Iran Ivan Istomin announced.

Istomin commented the statement made earlier by Mahmoud Jafary Head of the Busher NPP project from Iranian side that Busher NPP is ready for physical start-up in 3-4months after delivery of nuclear fuel.

"It would be impossible to put into operation Busher NPP this autumn. Even if Russia delivers the first party of nuclear fuel now, it will be impossible to put into operation Busher NPP in six months. For example, my organization is responsible for assembling the key operation equipment. We need to assemble 300 tons of equipment, but up to date only 100 tons have been assembled that is due to delay in shipments of equipment for us by the Suppliers", he told.

According to Istomin, the current crisis of defaults in payments from the Iranian side discredited the Busher NPP project in estimation of the Suppliers.

"It will take 6 month to restore trust of the Busher project", Istomin thinks.

"Thus, the real date of physical start-up of unit is postponed to Autumn 2008. It would be possible only, if all funding problems created by Iranian Customer are solved in shortest time", - he added.

Istomin expressed the amazement of "irresponsible" statement of Mahmoud Jafary. "Every month the both sides sign the Act of work fulfillment. Everybody who works at the site knows the real situation, although formally they can not know everything since they are responsible only for specific part of work".

SOURCE: AtomInfo.Ru

DATE: August 06, 2007

Topics: NPP, Russia, Asia, Iran, NPP Bushehr