There is no need to talk about the full-scale development of the atomic complex in a country that does not have an operating nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plants are only one of the constituent parts of any serious peaceful atomic program, one might say, its showcase. The ability to freely operate nuclear power plants outside the fuel cycle has appeared quite recently.
Preliminary assessments of the state of the atomic facility did not bode well for Russian engineers, but Tehran repeatedly met the wishes of the new partner. At the same time, the Iranian leadership almost immediately abandoned the proposed Russian transfer of the nuclear power plant to the north - either to the mountains or on the Caspian coast. The Russian side was ready to provide prompt supplies of equipment, construction materials, but, most importantly, nuclear raw materials to both proposed "points" from the plants located quite close in the cities of Shevchenko (now Aktau) and Ust-Kamenogorsk.
The negotiations dragged on, Moscow again, like two decades ago, feared that Iran might go off the peaceful nuclear "rails" for the military. However, this circumstance did not in the least interfere with the development of a feasibility study and the first stage of the project for the reconstruction of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr. And the main thing was that the Russians finally left their former doubts in the past and actually offered Iran a deployed atomic project to match its own, which, fifty years earlier, was headed by Lavrenty Beria himself.
In this picture, Beria is depicted together with Kurchatov and Korolev. It seems that there are no such photos even in the secret archives.
This politician, accused of all possible sins, still enjoys considerable authority among nuclear specialists.
Perhaps the somewhat unexpected pliability of the Russians became a decisive factor for the then President of Iran, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, who needed to somehow balance his not very popular reforms in the country. Paying tribute to the Russian atomic scientists, one should nevertheless remember: in fact, Iran revived its nuclear program long before it dared to invite the Russians to Bushehr.
So, work on large-scale mining of uranium ore resumed during the war with Iraq. In Isfahan, where the Russians were just proposing to move the nuclear power plant from Bushehr, with the support of China, albeit not too hastily, a training and research center was created. Its main element was the heavy water research reactor in Arak (Arak). The underground processing plant in Fordow and other facilities also went into operation.
At the same time, at the end of the eighties, Iran also stepped up the training of its own personnel, sending numerous groups of engineers and scientists to Switzerland and Holland, as well as to China. Iranian students appeared in the classrooms of atomic universities in countries that did not support US sanctions. At the same time, negotiations were held on the purchase of uranium enrichment technologies and the production of heavy water with companies in Germany and Switzerland.
Nevertheless, the real possession of nuclear technologies (which met the ambitions of the new leaders of Iran) was still a long way off. Even very far away. And the Russian project promised a breakthrough, albeit not quick, but decisive and almost guaranteed. The logical result of mutual interest was the signing on August 24, 1992 of an agreement on cooperation in the field of peaceful use of atomic energy between the governments of Russia and Iran. A day later, on August 25, an agreement was concluded on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran.
But it took additional time to sign the contract to complete the construction of Unit 1 of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, and this happened only in January 1995. By that time, the design work was already close to completion, and the same VVER-1000 reactor was tested at several operating nuclear power plants. Reality fully confirmed the correctness of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin …
In this photo, next to A. N. Kosygin, you can see a very young A. A. Gromyko
However, Iran's nuclear program had its own big history even then. Back in 1957, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi signed an agreement with Washington on cooperation within the framework of the Atoms for Peace program. In many ways, the Iranian program resembled the American one, although there were attempts to adopt something from the Russians. But since the time of L. Beria, the USSR guarded its atomic secrets very strictly, and no talk about the traditions of friendship worked here.
There was nothing unusual in the set of the Shah's wishes: he wanted "his" nuclear energy, "his" technologies for his own reactors and a full fuel cycle, as well as the opportunity to use them in medicine, industry and agriculture. And finally, Iran did not hide its desire to have its own operating system for ensuring radiation safety - for people and the environment.
As you can see, Tehran's claims to atomic independence were very serious. At the same time, the fuel cycle had to be built in such a way as to ensure the highest possible level of self-sufficiency. It must be admitted that in Iran the conditions for mastering "critical" technologies, both in terms of the supply of raw materials and the level of industrial development, were in many ways even better at that time than, for example, in China or India. However, in the end, it was these countries that managed to get ahead of Iran in achieving nuclear status, although Beijing and Delhi had, perhaps, no less problems with the "peaceful atom" than Tehran. But the political regimes did not change there. However, most of all, Tehran was irritated, of course, by the appearance of such a member as Israel in the “atomic club”.
Despite the difficulties with the nuclear power plant, Iran continued to extract "atomic raw materials", carried out strictly classified work on the development of enrichment technologies, primarily at the plant in Fordo, and also actively developed the machine-building complex, which could later be easily reoriented to nuclear issues. The halted construction in Bushehr every year became an ever greater brake on the implementation of the nuclear program as a whole.
At some point, Tehran once again tried to do without the Russians. They even remembered another unfinished nuclear power plant - "Darkovin", located on the Karun River. This station, not far from the border with Iraq, began to be erected by the French - the company "Framatom", and two nuclear power units of 910 MW each were to start working there at once. But this project was also stopped by the sanctions after the Islamic revolution. The French did not want to return to Iran - they had already put these units into operation at their Graveline station on the Pas-de-Calais coast near Dunkirk.
Without interrupting negotiations with Atomstroyexport, Iran also managed to sign a preliminary agreement on the construction of two reactors of 300 MW each and with China - just on the “French” section. But the Chinese specialists clearly lacked the "Russian scope". Having estimated the costs and efforts, they withdrew from the contract long before the start of work.
Impatience was brewing in Tehran, but the specialists of Atomstroyexport, who received all the necessary documentation from the designers, both for the inspection of the facility and for the upcoming construction, were in no hurry. Mainly referring to the lack of funds. This was largely due not to the customer's solvency, but to the fact that the Iranian partners for a long time did not agree with the requirement to minimize the participation of their own (Iranian) specialists in the project.
One cannot but say that in reality Iranian specialists, and even more so companies and firms, in Bushehr were not really too zealous, and blamed all their shortcomings either on their predecessors or on new partners.
One of the power engineers who worked at the Bushehr nuclear power plant after several other nuclear projects said: “At any facility, if you offer something of value, you will be heard unambiguously. In Bushehr (this is how the name of the town and the object sounds in the local dialect. - A. P.) this is not the case. Everything goes away like sand. They will say to you more than once: “Well done, great idea,” but that's the end of it. Nothing will move, no matter how hard you try."
As a result, everything came to a rather unexpected end, or rather, to the beginning. Russia, more precisely, the Atomstroyexport concern, simply received a “turnkey order”. In 1998, a corresponding agreement was signed, and already in 2001, technological equipment from Russia began to come to Bushehr. By that time, Russian specialists had managed not only to patch holes in the shells of the reactor zone and bring the engineering systems of the future station back to normal, but also to complete work on the "adaptation" of the German geometry of the reactor compartment to Russian equipment. And this actually guaranteed that the nuclear power plant could be launched in the next two or three years.
However, politics intervened again. The West has lashed out at Moscow and Tehran with derogatory criticism. By tradition, Washington immediately connected the media to the case - the American magazine Forbes, along with the Washington Post and New York's Daily News, complained that the station was actually “given over to the Russians”. And this was, perhaps, the softest attack by the press. They were generally ready to accuse Russia of violating the 1994 IAEA nuclear safety convention, although it was Moscow that made every effort to get Iran to sign it.
However, of course, neither Washington nor the IAEA had any evidence that the Russian nuclear scientists handed over precisely military technologists to their Iranian colleagues. In fact, it was the successful "atomic restart" of Iran that became the main reason for the formation of the well-known contact group "5 + 1". It was formed in 2006 as part of the permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, the United States, England, France, China, adding Iran to them. In Tehran, however, they preferred to interpret the composition of the group not as "5 + 1", but "3 + 3", a priori registering Russia and China as their allies.
At the finish line, Germany was involved in the group, which greatly helped in concluding the notorious Joint Comprehensive Action Plan. This plan, which in Iran itself is not called a nuclear deal, in fact, dictated to Iran work exclusively on the "peaceful atom" in exchange for the complete lifting of sanctions. Including through the UN Security Council.
At that time, very few people knew that after the signing of the agreement on turnkey construction, the Bushehr NPP project, and without too much hype, actually turned out to be tied to a whole range of work on the reanimation of the Iranian nuclear program as a whole. In Iran, only specialists drew attention to this, while the "opponents" from the United States and Israel realized it too late. More precisely, only when Iran at the underground plant in Fordow began to launch centrifuges one after another to enrich "nuclear fuel".
It looks like the CIA still regrets that it discovered the Iranian secret nuclear plant in Fordow too late.
And this was already a very transparent hint that Tehran is not too inclined to remain forever without any chance of gaining access to nuclear technology. Technologies, let's face it, are not peaceful in nature. Yes, a military atom needs not just a lot, but a lot of centrifuges, but since then the world atomic club had to somehow restrain this disobedient "patient" within the framework of the "peaceful atom" program. And to do this now, and in a permanent mode, it is almost exclusively Russia that has to do it.
About the most secret atomic plant with the notorious centrifuges, the American special services managed to find out only in the middle of the 2000s, but indirect signs of its work appeared much earlier. However, it seems that it was only then that Washington realized that Iran could indeed master those very "critical technologies" in the foreseeable future.
And no one was already worried about the fact that fuel enrichment technologies for nuclear power plants are very different from those needed to obtain weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. After all, much more important was the fact that Iran could get out of control. And no sanctions can be made to reverse this. The Iranian nuclear issue immediately acquired a completely different, international status. Meetings of the "5 + 1" group became almost continuous, although by 2007, when its activity was just beginning, all work in Bushehr had practically stopped.
This was the beginning of the Soviet stage of the construction of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr (photo of 1985)
An indicative fact: "international regulation" on the Iranian nuclear issue actually turned into the hands of the Russian executors of the project. As soon as the experts from the “5 + 1” group separated the “cutlets from the flies”, that is, they promptly separated the “military” and “peaceful” technologies, work at the nuclear power plant again proceeded in a working rhythm.
The long-awaited physical start-up of the Bushehr NPP began on August 21, 2010, and a month before that, a hot run-in of the very nuclear steam-generating plant, due to which the desalination of water was carried out, was carried out, which so attracted the Iranian customer. Shortly before the "physical" start-up under the supervision of IAEA inspectors, nuclear fuel was delivered to the reactor compartment of the station.
Bushehr nuclear power plant: modern view (photo of 2015)
The final transfer of the Bushehr NPP to Iran for operation took place in September 2013, with a slight delay against the last schedule agreed by both parties.
Well, in relation to the initial plans, the delay was several years. The repeated postponement of the commissioning of the Bushehr nuclear power plant - more often for technical, but sometimes also for political reasons - was more than once regarded by the public opinion of the country as a concession to Russia to pressure from the West. Until now, in Iran, many specialists and Western-oriented politicians speculate that cooperation with Moscow is fraught with a certain risk.
Be that as it may, the specialists of Atomenergostroy are currently preparing pre-design documentation for the construction of at least three more power units in Bushehr. Iran does not hide plans to order several more nuclear power plants from Russia; President Hassan Rouhani has repeatedly noted that the government will continue negotiations with Moscow on the development of nuclear energy in the country.
“We have been negotiating this issue for a long time,” he said. "I hope that everything will develop according to the schedule, and Iran will be able to continue building nuclear power plants and continue cooperation." Apparently, the next "atomic puzzle" Tehran and Moscow will be able to put together much faster. Moreover, Turkey has recently joined in nuclear cooperation with Russia - one of the members of the political troika, which is making not virtual, but real efforts to peacefully resolve the protracted crisis in Syria.
