Tweet
Lovely.....
Link....
Link....
(NewsCore) - The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a "tragic disaster for humankind," according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.
There is a "great likelihood" that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by "second-class engineers" who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world's most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has "no serious training program" for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.
The document's authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it. It also echoes fears in the nuclear industry about the safety of a secretive project to which few outsiders have been granted access.
Iran is the only country with a nuclear power plant that has not joined the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which obliges signatories to observe international safety standards and share information.
Sami Alfaraj, head of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies and an adviser to the Kuwaiti government, says an accident at Bushehr would be a "total calamity for the world," in which nuclear contamination would spew across a wide region.
He could not assess Bushehr's safety because Iran's cooperation with its neighbors has been "nil," he protested. "They say 'trust us' but there's no such thing as 'trust us' in nuclear politics. They are playing Russian roulette not just with us but with the world."
Bushehr was started in 1975 when the Shah of Iran awarded the contract to Kraftwerk Union of Germany. When the Germans pulled out after the 1979 Islamic revolution the reactors were far from finished. They sustained serious damage in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The document claims airstrikes left the steel containment vessel with 1,700 holes, letting in hundreds of tons of rainwater.
The regime revived the project in the 1990s, but with one reactor only. It wanted a prestige project to show the Islamic Republic could match the scientific achievements of the West.
It may also have wanted a cover for developing its nuclear weapons program -- and the opportunities for personal enrichment that the project gave Iran's elite. This time Iran employed Russian engineers, who had not built a foreign nuclear reactor since the Soviet Union started to collapse in 1989.
Russia's experts wanted to start from scratch. The Iranians, having already spent more than $1 billion, insisted they built on the German foundations.
This involved adapting a structure built for a vertical German reactor to take a horizontal Russian reactor -- an unprecedented operation. Of the 80,000 pieces of German equipment, many had become corroded, obsolete or lacked manuals and paperwork.
"The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans' and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses," the document says. It goes on to claim that "much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers," who consider the project a "holiday."
There is a "great likelihood" that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by "second-class engineers" who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world's most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has "no serious training program" for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.
The document's authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it. It also echoes fears in the nuclear industry about the safety of a secretive project to which few outsiders have been granted access.
Iran is the only country with a nuclear power plant that has not joined the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which obliges signatories to observe international safety standards and share information.
Sami Alfaraj, head of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies and an adviser to the Kuwaiti government, says an accident at Bushehr would be a "total calamity for the world," in which nuclear contamination would spew across a wide region.
He could not assess Bushehr's safety because Iran's cooperation with its neighbors has been "nil," he protested. "They say 'trust us' but there's no such thing as 'trust us' in nuclear politics. They are playing Russian roulette not just with us but with the world."
Bushehr was started in 1975 when the Shah of Iran awarded the contract to Kraftwerk Union of Germany. When the Germans pulled out after the 1979 Islamic revolution the reactors were far from finished. They sustained serious damage in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The document claims airstrikes left the steel containment vessel with 1,700 holes, letting in hundreds of tons of rainwater.
The regime revived the project in the 1990s, but with one reactor only. It wanted a prestige project to show the Islamic Republic could match the scientific achievements of the West.
It may also have wanted a cover for developing its nuclear weapons program -- and the opportunities for personal enrichment that the project gave Iran's elite. This time Iran employed Russian engineers, who had not built a foreign nuclear reactor since the Soviet Union started to collapse in 1989.
Russia's experts wanted to start from scratch. The Iranians, having already spent more than $1 billion, insisted they built on the German foundations.
This involved adapting a structure built for a vertical German reactor to take a horizontal Russian reactor -- an unprecedented operation. Of the 80,000 pieces of German equipment, many had become corroded, obsolete or lacked manuals and paperwork.
"The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans' and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses," the document says. It goes on to claim that "much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers," who consider the project a "holiday."
Fractal Design Arc Mini R2, 3800X, Asus B450M-PRO mATX, 2x8GB B-die@3800C16, AMD Vega64, Seasonic 850W Gold, Black Ice Nemesis/Laing DDC/EKWB 240 Loop (VRM>CPU>GPU), Noctua Fans.
Comment