Rooppur plant becomes nuclear facility today

With the handing over of radioactive fuel to Bangladesh authorities today, the country will be the 33rd nuclear fuel user in the world.

The Rooppur power plant will also become a nuclear facility.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to attend the handover ceremony in Rooppur of Pabna via video link, says a press release issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general  of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will also join the ceremony virtually.

Alexey Likhachev, director general of Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, on behalf of the Russian Federation, will hand over a certificate of fuel delivery and a model of the fuel assembly to Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman.

Rosatom is building the 2400-megawatt power plant. Its first unit of 1,200MW capacity is set to be operational next year and the other unit in 2025.

The first batch of the nuclear fuel (Uranium rods) reached Bangladesh on a special cargo plane from Russia on September 28. It was transported to the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant site on September 29, according to the project officials.

Md Shawkat Akbar, the power plant project director, said, "We got the licence for nuclear fuel import and storage at the Rooppur project after fulfilling all necessary requirements … under the IAEA's guidelines."

He said the arrival of nuclear fuel and its storage at the site took them into the final stage of commissioning the country's first-ever nuclear power plant.

The IAEA during its general conference in Vienna last month made Bangladesh a board member of the IAEA.