Iran’s only nuclear power plant shut down | Nuclear Issues
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Officials say a temporary restructuring shutdown began on Saturday and could last for up to four days, possibly causing power outages.
Iran’s nuclear plant has been temporarily shut down to “revive technology”, Iranian TV said.
An employee of the state-owned electricity company, Gholamali Rakhshanimehr, said at a press conference that the Bushehr shutdown started on Saturday and will last “three or four days”.
He also said that power outages could occur. He did not elaborate, but this is the first time Iran has reported a sudden shutdown of the crop, in the southern port city of Bushehr.
It went online in 2011 with the help of Russia. Iran is supposed to export used fuel rods from a reactor back to Russia as a way to develop nuclear weapons.
In March, nuclear weapons commissioner Mahmoud Jafari said the plant could be shut down as Iran could not get its weapons out of Russia due to bank sanctions imposed by the United States in 2018.
Bushehr is powered by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran, and is regulated by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The UN has not immediately responded to a request for comment on the closure.
Abas Aslani, senior researcher at the Tehran-based Center for Middle East Strategic Study, told Al Jazeera that the shutdown could be a problem for Iranian power in the past. disruption of cryptocurrency mining.
“These [shutdown] “It is more important for the blackout, than for the nuclear sector,” Aslani said.
“Because nowadays we see that cryptocurrency mining is destroying electricity in this country and that has caused problems in the past.”
Construction of Bushehr, on the north coast of the Persian Gulf, began under Iranian rule in the mid-1970’s.
After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the plant was routinely monitored in the Iran-Iraq war. Russia later completed the construction of the site.
The plant, which sits close to the wrong lines and is built to withstand strong earthquakes, is constantly shaken by earthquakes. There have been no major earthquakes in the area in recent days.
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