Fuel loading at Unit 1 of Bangladesh’s Rooppur Nuclear Power Project is likely to begin in early February, project officials said. They said trial electricity generation could start between early March and late April.
A senior official of Nuclear Power Plant Company Bangladesh Limited said on Dec. 29, “The remaining ancillary works are expected to be completed within the next five weeks, paving the way for fuel loading in early February.”
Officials said loading should take about a month, followed by reactor startup and water heating, and output will ramp up to 1,200 megawatts.
Unit 1 missed a December 2024 target.
The project began in 2016 with an initial cost of 1.13093 trillion taka, about $9.3 billion, and a proposed revision would raise it to about $11.4 billion.
The reactor and infrastructure are being built by Russian firms.