Middle East News Line (via GSN) cites Russian officials describing technical difficulties with Bushehr arising from changes to design specifications:
Russia’s effort to complete Iran’s first nuclear plant continues to be hampered by technical difficulties.
Russian officials said that despite significant progress over the last year, the Bushehr nuclear reactor plant has encountered technical difficulties. They said the key difficulty has been adapting the construction of the nuclear reactor core to Iranian specifications.
“The Iranians have changed their specifications several times and this has been a key challenge in completing the reactor on schedule,” an official said.
Arms Control Wonk reported on an unclassified Livermore briefing that last year that suggests Bushehr is not suitable for a nuclear weapons program.
One recipient of the briefing said that the design history of the reactor will complicate reprocessing of spent fuel to recover plutonium:
… the reactor, in large part because of its mixed design heritage is a piece of garbage. It is, of course, true that Pu will be produced as is the nature of fissioning uranium. That said, the reactor chemistry is going to produce really, really nasty fission products. It would not be overwhelmingly difficult to separate Pu from the spent fuel coming out of Bushehr but the bother to worth ratio is extremely high – you are going to get a lot of ‘bad’ Pu for very little “good”.
I identified the briefing, but it is FOUO.
The description of the briefing, emphasizing the German origins of the reactor, and the MENL story, emphasizing later changes by the Iranians, are slightly different explanations for the technical problems—but they may be related.
Also, Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev told reporters that the first shipment of fuel for Bushehr would occur “either at the end of the year 2005 or early 2006.” I have the full text of the interview, but its not very hot.