Iran's only nuclear power plant undergoes 'unexplained' emergency shutdown

Iran on Sunday initiated an unexplained emergency shutdown of its sole nuclear power plant at Halileh, Bushehr, an official at the state electric energy company, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, told the state TV. The “temporary suspension” at the station would last for at least “three to four days,”  he said, adding that it could lead to power outages. According to Iranian press reports, the plant had been non-operational for over the last three days and had led to a 1,000 MW power shortage.

This would be the first time that the Islamic Republic has reported an emergency shutdown of its solitary power plant subordinate to the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), which was plugged into Iran's national electric grid in September 2011 with the help of Russia, and turned fully operational five years later. A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Iranian Parliament told Hezbollah's Al Manar TV that a technical glitch prompted the closure of the Bushehr nuclear plant and not the sabotage. The plant has been serviced by the Russian state corporation Rosatom. 

[Bushehr power plant. Credit: Twitter/@ZionWarrior6]

Located in the southern port city of Bushehr, the VVER 1000MWe reactor was built after Moscow and Iran signed a deal in 1994. The nuclear reactors on the site had sustained severe damages from bombing raids during the Iraq-Iran war and had withstood a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that hit the southwest region of Iran in 2013. The Islamic Republic had received close to 82 tons of fuel shipment from Russia for initial operations of The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), and later all fuel assembly was imported from Russia, according to the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).

The E3/EU+3 talks in Geneva that led to the Joint Plan of Action (JCPA) had entitled the IAEA with the 24-hour access to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant for inspections. The 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) a deal negotiated by the United States required Iran to ship out all spent nuclear fuel as it forbade the country to indulge in nuclear fuel reprocessing for up to 15 years. 

[Ali Akbar Salehi, Vice-President of Iran and Head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), in the margins of the third EU-Iran High-level Seminar on International Nuclear Cooperation. Credit: Twitter/@eu_eeas]

In September 2016, the Iranian officials struck a deal with Russia to construct additional two nuclear reactors in the facility, for which, it held a groundbreaking ceremony. At the time, an Iranian diplomat and head of the AEOI, Ali Akbar Salehi had declared that the construction would abide by IAEA safeguards. Russia’s Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation’s fuel division, meanwhile, signed a contract with the AEOI on 19 June 2017 to deliver reserve fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant in late 2017, an indication of the nuclear partnership between Russia and Iran. As a nonproliferation measure, Iran is also expected to send the spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Moscow. 

Jafari slams US banking sanctions

Iran’s nuclear official Mahmoud Jafari in March had told the state TV that the nuclear plant’s functionality could be hampered as Iran has been unable to procure parts and equipment from Russia due to the United States’ banking sanctions imposed in 2018. The former Trump administration has imposed sanctions on 18 "major" Iranian banks in order to choke Iran’s access to funds and to penalize the non-Iranian institutions trading with the Islamic Republic for what the ex-US President had described as “aggressive activities”. Iran’s UN ambassador had labelled the US move as “economic terrorism”.