Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed on Tuesday said that the test run of the much vaunted Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant at Iswardi in Pabna would be conducted in December.
He made the disclosure while he was talking to reporters at his secretariat office in the capital Dhaka.
Constructed with the technical assistance and the loan of $11.38 billion from Russia, the country鈥檚 first nuclear power plant at about 250 kilometres west of the capital Dhaka is already two years behind the 2024 deadline.
Salehuddin, who is also the adviser to the science and technology ministry, said that they had asked the Russian companies concerned to conduct the test run in November.
But the Russian firms want the test run in December, he said.
The construction of two reactors with capacity of 1,200 megawatts each was started in 2017 during the Awami League regime, which was ousted in August 2024 in a mass uprising.
The regime change delayed the progress of the highly technical power plant for the second time.
The pillow scam involving purchase corruption, Covid and sanctions on Russian companies by the United Nations in 2022 also complicated the prospect of the power plant.
The finance adviser said that fuels of the plant had already been reached in the country while recommendations by the International Atomic Energy Agency had been implemented.
The IAEA is expected to visit the country soon to give its final approval for the test run, said the finance adviser.
The adviser also said that the price of per unit electricity of the plant was yet to be set.
Science and technology ministry officials said that an inter-ministerial committee was working to settle the power purchase agreement between the Nuclear Power Plant Company Bangladesh Limited and the Bangladesh Power Development Board before fuel loading into the first reactor.
The second reactor will be commissioned in 2027, said the officials.
The cost of a kilowatt power production in Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will be 9.36 cents compared with that of 5.34 cents from a similar plant in Tamil Nadu鈥檚 Kudankulam in India, according to a research released by Springer-Verlag GmbH, Germany in 2022.
On December 23, 2024, France-based Agence France-Presse reported that the Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh launched a probe into the alleged $5 billion embezzlement connected to the nuclear power plant by ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina who fled to India on August 5 past year.
