- by: Martin Fletcher
- From:The Times
- October 08, 2011
IRAN’S first nuclear power station is unsafe and will probably cause a « tragic disaster » according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.
The Bushehr reactor is likely to cause the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl and Fukushima, says the document, passed to The Times by a reputable source and attributed to a former member of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran’s legal department.
It claims Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by « second-class engineers » who bolted together Russian and German technology 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 » or a contingency plan for accidents.