Posted on 03/06/2011 6:00:30 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
03/04/11
Bushehr Setbacks Trigger Iranian Nuclear-Safety Concerns
By Robert Tait, RFE/RL
Repeated delays in the opening of a showpiece Iranian nuclear reactor are triggering concerns over Tehran's ability to safely run a civilian nuclear-power plant without the risk of a catastrophic accident, analysts say.
The worries have been provoked by latest setback to hit the Bushehr plant where -- according to a report published last week on Iran's nuclear activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- engineers are being forced to remove 163 fuel rods. Russia's state nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom -- whose scientists have helped to build the plant -- said this week that the action was needed after damage was discovered at one of the reactor's main cooling pumps.
It is the latest in a series of setbacks to hit the reactor, whose construction has cost more than $1 billion.
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But David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, warns that inadequate attention to safety at Bushehr has the potential to trigger an accident on the scale of the 1986 disaster at Chornobyl in the former Soviet Union.
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(Excerpt) Read more at payvand.com ...
P!
Who cares if the islamos have a meltdown?
Our cars will drive on radioactive Saudi oil.
you might care, given the impact on the world economy of the nuclear contamination of the northern/central Persian gulf shipping lanes and oil fields of many regional producers
Bushehr is not exactly in a remote economically unproductive location
Chernobyl, the gift that keeps on keeping on
If it did do a Chernobyl, there would likely be some very interesting downwind hazards.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usmc/gulfclimate.pdf
The slow, predominate wind would likely contaminate much of Iran, and could hit Karachi, and even Mumbai.
You mean it will bypass Taliban land(tribal area?) Too bad.
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