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Committee of the National Economic Council for completion by December 2024.
As of February, the overall physical progress of the project is 44 percent and the financial progress is 33 percent.
On the other hand, the physical progress of the gridline on Jamuna river is 50 percent as of February, according to project officials.
The construction work for the transmission line through the Padma and Jamuna rivers for the Rooppur nuclear power plant started later than scheduled as its Indian contractor left the country following the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led government on August 5 last year.
A total of 669 kilometres of the gridline, including 16 kilometres of river crossing line in both Padma and Jamuna, is needed for power transmission to the national grid from the country’s first nuclear power plant, according to the Power Grid Company Bangladesh.
However, project officials said they have resumed work and they are hopeful of completing the gridline’s work soon.
The physical work of unit-1 is almost complete but the gridline work is yet to be ready, said Zahedul Hasan, project director of the Rooppur nuclear power plant.
As a result, the technical tests through the power supply in the unit cannot be done.
At least two months is needed to complete all tests.
After completing the tests, fuel needs to be loaded in the reactor building, which will take another three months.
“After completing the gridline work, we need five to six months to reach the ‘Change Reaction’ step for starting up unit-1.”
A top official of the IAEA will come to Bangladesh on March 7 to check the preparations.
“After IAEA’s observation we will go for the next step,” Hasan said.
The 2,400MW power plant is being built in Rooppur, Pabna for $12.65 billion.
According to the original project proposal, unit-1 would be in operation on December 23, 2022, unit-2 on October 8, 2023 and the entire project would be completed by December 31, 2025.
The construction of unit-1 formally started on November 30, 2017 and unit-2 on July 14, 2018.