Insider: Iran Will Be Site of ‘Next Chernobyl Tragedy’ and a ‘Total Calamity for the World’

“(NewsCore) – The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a ‘tragic disaster for humankind,’ according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a ‘great likelihood’ that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by ‘second-class engineers’ who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world’s most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has ‘no serious training program’ for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.

The document’s authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it. It also echoes fears in the nuclear industry about the safety of a secretive project to which few outsiders have been granted access.

Iran is the only country with a nuclear power plant that has not joined the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which obliges signatories to observe international safety standards and share information.

Sami Alfaraj, head of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies and an adviser to the Kuwaiti government, says an accident at Bushehr would be a ‘total calamity for the world,’ in which nuclear contamination would spew across a wide region.” Read more.