Alarm in Tehran and Moscow over Bushehr nuclear reactor’s near-explosion in
mid-October
Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr was shut down in mid-October for fear of an
explosion. Saturday Dec. 1, an authoritative Russian nuclear industry source
revealed the cause of its malfunction: “Indicators showed that some small
external parts were… in the [Bushehr] reactor vessel….” They were identified as
“bolts beneath the fuel cells.”
debkafile’s Moscow sources
report this information came from a source in the office of Sergei Kiriyenko,
head of the Russian nuclear energy authority Rosatom, which supervised the
construction of Iran’s first atomic reactor at Bushehr.
According to our intelligence sources, Russian scientists and engineers were
rushed from Moscow to Bushehr when Russian leaders including Vladimir Putin were
warned that the danger of an explosion at Bushehr was high. Neither Moscow nor
Tehran reported what was happening. Now they are racing against the clock to get
the reactor back on stream.
Russian experts estimated that an explosion at the Bushehr reactor had the
potential for causing a million Iranian deaths and hundreds of thousands of
radiation victims in the Persian Gulf emirates, which supply the world with
one-fifth of its fuel. The hazard was so great in October that Putin ordered
command teams of the Russian emergency ministry trained to deal with nuclear
disasters to set out for Bushehr in southern Iran and prepare the infrastructure
for larger teams.
The engineers immediately shut down the reactor and removed its 163 fuel
rods. The bolts which had turned up in the reactor vessel were examined to find
out from which part of the plant they had come loose – from the fuel rods –
which would have embarrassed Russia as their supplier - or some other part of
the reactor. The Russian source which revealed the mishap made a point of
saying that the bolts were “small external parts,” indicating that they were not
from the rods.
Our intelligence sources in Moscow report that two possible
outside causes of the malfunction are under scrutiny by Moscow and Tehran:
1.
The bolts were deliberately unscrewed and dropped into the reactor vessel as an
act of sabotage;
2. The Stuxnet virus which attacked Iran’s nuclear program two years ago was
back and had tampered with the reactor’s computers.
Five months ago, Iran suspended operations at the Fordo underground
enrichment facility near Qom after the power lines supplying the plant were
sabotaged on Aug. 17 and some of the centrifuges blew up. The Iranians resumed
work at Fordo in the second half of September without discovering who was
responsible for the incident. However, the suspicion of sabotage at Bushehr
immediately crossed the minds of the Russian and Iranian investigators, although
they have not ruled an accident or incompetence.
Bushehr supplies the Iran’s
national electricity grid with one-fifth of its fuel and it was therefore
important to get it running again without delay. Our sources report that Monday,
Nov. 26, Iranian and Russian engineers reloaded the fuel rods – still without
explaining why they had been removed.
Friday, Nov. 30, shortly before the
disclosure from Moscow, Tehran for the first time in its twenty-year nuclear
program showed concern about the impact of “nuclear accidents” at Iran’s nuclear
sites on the wellbeing of the population and environment.
Gholamreza
Massoumi, head of Iran’s accident and medical emergency center, announced: “We
believe all of our emergency services should be trained and ready to face
nuclear accidents.”
He referred to “accidents” at the Isfahan Uranium
Conversion Facility where yellowcake is converted into highly toxic uranium
hexafluoride and revealed: “People who have been in the region, for example –
Isfahan’s UCF – have had some accidents for which they have been treated.”
He admitted that some employees at Isfahan had suffered from “health issues”
and warned of “problems that civilians living close to nuclear sites could
face.”
Massourni’s comments were removed from the semi-official Mehr news
agency’s website a few hours after they were published.
Officials in Tehran,
already jumpy over the near-catastrophe in Bushehr, must have realized that the
comments about the urgent need to prepare emergency services for nuclear
accidents, if tied in with the “health problems” at Isfahan and the
near-disaster at Bushehr, were a recipe for a nightmare scenario of mass panic
in the population and an outcry in the Gulf region against the hazards of Iran’s
nuclear program – even before it produces a weapon.
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