Bangladesh is expected to join over 50 countries using nuclear power peacefully as one of the two under-construction reactors of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in Iswardi will go on production in October.
Officials of the Ministry of Science and Technology have told 抖阴精品 that around 52 days will take the reactor to deliver potential 1,200 megawatts of electricity to the national grid.
The nuclear power production will start in the power-starved country relying on power plants in neighbouring India, including the controversial Adani power company in Jharkhand, for meeting around 16 per cent its 14,000MW daily consumption in the current summer.
Besides, the power production from the country鈥檚 single biggest project under the Russian credit worth around $11.38 billion, almost two years later from the orginal deadline of2024, is expected to check the growing imports of liquefied natural gas that began in 2019 for power production, said energy experts.
Conceived before the country鈥檚 independence from Pakistan in 1971 Liberation War, the construction of the country鈥檚 first nuclear power plant at Iswardi, some 150 kilometres west of Dhaka, was started during the Awami League regime that was ousted in the past year amid a mass uprising.
The regime change had dealt a new blow to the power plant since most of the engineers and experts from Russia left the country, said finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, also in charge of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
MST officials said that problems had been plaguing the complicated and highly technical power plant since its construction began in 2017.聽
From the pillow scam to the Covid pandemic that has not only delayed the progress of the power plant but sanctions on Russian companies by the United Nation in 2022 also complicated the repayment of loan to Moscow by Dhaka.
The Russian experts have returned to Iswardi while a revision of the overall loan pact with Russia has been completed, said finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed.
Dhaka has convinced Moscow to extend the loan disbursement period for the nuclear power plant until 2027 from the previous 2024 and also to defer the principal repayment by 18 months from March 2027.
Under the new arrangement, repayments will now commence in September 2028.
So far, $7.7 billion has been disbursed by Russia.
The deadlock in repayment of the loan is expected to be settled soon, said the finance adviser.
A recent appeal by Dhaka to the Federal Reserve, state bank of the US, to allow transection with Russian companies on the ground of peaceful use of nuclear power is under active consideration of the US, said the finance adviser.
Close to $1 billion has been kept in a Bangladesh Bank escrow account to repay loans and interest for the Russia-funded Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant following sanctions were imposed on Russia by the US and its allies after the invasion of Ukraine.
The commission of the first reactor will be done under the supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency, the global promoter of safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear technology
An IAEA team will arrive in Bangladesh on a fortnight visit in the next month, MST secretary Mokabbir Hossain said on Saturday.
The MST secretary said that they were expecting to settle the power purchase agreement between the Nuclear Power Plant Company Bangladesh Limited and the Bangladesh Power Development Board by an inter-ministerial committee before fuel loading into the reactor.
MST officials said that they were expecting to have a power generation cost of聽average Tk 6 to Tk 7 per unit聽by its overall capacity of 2,400MW by the two same-capacity reactors.
The second reactor will be commissioned in 2027, said the officials.
Energy adviser M Shamsul Alam of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh said that they had calculated that the production cost of Rooppur Nuclear power might hit Tk 12 per unit.
He said that the augmentation of nuclear power would not only increase the electricity generation but also the overcapacity that would eventually push up the capacity charge.
Former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain noted that the power subsidy due to the overcapacity had eaten almost one-third of the overall subsidy bill under the national budget in recent years.聽聽聽聽聽
Capacity payment for idle power plants had drawn huge criticisms for the ousted AL regime while the high production cost of the under-construction nuclear power plant and its loan deal with Russia have been the much-talked about issues at home and abroad.
The cost of per kilowatt power production in Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will be 9.36 cents compared to 5.34 cents from a similar plant in Tamil Nadu鈥檚 Kudankulam, India. The high construction cost has been attributed to high production cost by a research released by Springer-Verlag GmbH, Germany in 2022.
On December 23, 2024, the France-based Agence France-Presse reported that the Anti-Corruption Commission launched a probe into the alleged $5 billion embezzlement connected to the nuclear power plant by ousted leader Sheikh Hasina who fled to India on August 5 amid the mass uprising.