Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant: Further delay in supply

The wait for the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) to begin supply gets extended even further. Although the transmission lines have been completed, the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will not be connected to the national grid just yet. The Russian contractor has been given an extension of two years as the work did not finish according to the plan.

Officials concerned say that the deadline had to be extended as the work could not be completed within the initially agreed period. A decision to extend the deadline was made in February last year.

Under the original agreement, the deadline for the first unit was set for October 2023, and for the second unit it was set for October 2024.

Under the new agreement, the deadline for the completion of the construction of the first unit has been set for December 2026 and deadline for the second one is set for December 2027. The Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission signed the revised contract with the Russian contractor on 20 June.

Officials involved in the project say that the delay was caused by several factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, foreign experts’ travel complications, and delays in equipment delivery.

The Bangladesh government is required to pay 10 per cent of the money allocated for project expense annually, but that too could not be paid regularly due to a crisis of foreign currency.

The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant is the largest single infrastructure project in the country’s history. It is being implemented by the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission under the authority of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Built with Russian financial and technical assistance, this power plant being constructed at Ishwardi upazila of Pabna is consisted of two units, each with a power generation capacity of 1,200 megawatts.

The estimated project cost is around Tk 1.14 trillion (Tk 114,000 crore). Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom is the main contractor on this project.

There’s a joint coordination committee formed by Russia and Bangladesh to determine policy decisions in the project. During a meeting of that committee held in Dhaka last year, a decision was made to extend the project deadline by two years. However, it took time to finalise the agreement.

According to sources at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology initially approved a one-and-a-half-year extension. But the contractor did not agree to this. Later, the ministry extended it by six more months, setting the new deadline for June 2027.

The contractor, however, stated, from a technical standpoint it is not possible in any way to complete the project by June next year.

Although the contract allows for an extension of time, the contractor is not permitted to increase the overall project cost. People involved in the project say that the plant is not yet generating any revenue as it did not go into production in time. As a result, the government is forced to bear the operational expenses, which will eventually increase the overall cost of electricity production.

Project director Md Kabir Hossain told Prothom Alo, “There has been no recent delay. The project is now progressing as usual. The delays occurred in the past due to the pandemic and the war. So, the contractor has had an extension. Hopefully, power generation will begin in phases from next year.”

The initial plan was to begin production from the first unit of the nuclear power plant in December 2023. Later it was pushed back to December 2024. The work of the transmission line not being complete was presented as the excuse for that.

However, the state-owned Power Grid Bangladesh opened the transmission line for connecting the RNPP to the national grid on this 2 June. After that, it was announced that trial production would begin within two to three months. Lastly, it was stated that power generation could start in October this year.

A source involved in the project mentioned that the pace of work at Rooppur slowed down a bit following the political shift in the country last August. They have to wait until December to load nuclear fuel into the reactor vessel. The trial production will begin only after that.

According to experts, once the nuclear fuel is loaded into the reactor vessel, the trial production will continue for at least six months. All the tests have to be conducted and international approvals have to be collected in phases during this time. So, there is not much possibility of starting commercial production before June next year.

Professor Shafiqul Islam of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Dhaka told Prothom Alo that mentioning the grid issues was merely an excuse. An alternative grid setup for trial production had already been prepared. In reality, the Rooppur power plant was not ready.

Stating that if the plant had gone into production on time, pressure on fuel imports for oil-based power plants would have been reduced, he further said that with the delay in the project, the cost of maintaining manpower is going up.

If it takes more than 10 years to implement this project, the cost of electricity generation will rise significantly, Shafiqul Islam added.