The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant: The Long, Troubled, Costly and Dangerous Life and After-Life of a Very Old Idea

Bangladesh is on the way to having its first nuclear power plant. Designed and being built by Russia at a cost of over 12 billion dollars, the Rooppur nuclear plant has been part of an on-and-off planning process for six decades. This sixty-year quest for constructing a reactor is blind to what has been learned over the same period about nuclear energy. It could take many more years before the plant starts to produce any electricity. Intended to operate for sixty years, electricity from this power plant will contribute to higher electricity bills for Bangladeshi consumers for decades given the high cost of construction. The same amount of electricity could be had much cheaper and much more quickly. Worse, for its sixty-year working life, and possibly for longer, it will cast a shadow of a nuclear accident over the people of Bangladesh, who will be forced to live with constant worry or try to just forget. Even if an accident does not occur, the nuclear waste produced by Rooppur will threaten people and nature for millennia with risk of radioactive contamination. This is what it is now to be a nuclear-powered nation.

Intended to operate for sixty years, electricity from this power plant will contribute to higher electricity bills for Bangladeshi consumers for decades given the high cost of construction. The same amount of electricity could be had much cheaper and much more quickly. Worse, for its sixty-year working life, and possibly for longer, it will cast a shadow of a nuclear accident over the people of Bangladesh, who will be forced to live with constant worry or try to just forget. Even if an accident does not occur, the nuclear waste produced by Rooppur will threaten people and nature for millennia with risk of radioactive contamination. This is what it is now to be a nuclear-powered nation.

How the Cold War Atom Went from Washington to Rooppur

In most countries, nuclear reactors first come up in planning documents. This is no different in Bangladesh, except that the idea goes back to even before Bangladesh became a country. The origins of the Rooppur reactor lie in Pakistan and Cold War politics, and elite dreams of an imagined future.

The first study on the viability of nuclear power in West and East Pakistan was undertaken in 1955 by Maurice D. Kilbridge, from the Illinois Institute of Technology, for the US National Planning Association as part of its Project on the Productive Uses of Nuclear Energy. At the time of the study, Kilbridge was a member of the Harvard University group of advisors (HAG) to the Planning Board of the Government of Pakistan and an author of Pakistan’s First Five Year Plan.[1]

The Kilbridge study came a year after Pakistan’s Minister for Industries, Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, announced that the government was setting up an Atomic Energy Research Organization. The announcement marked the beginning of Pakistan’s fateful embrace of the atom. It was a Cold War move. The announcement was made on the day Pakistan’s Prime Minister met with President Eisenhower in the White House in Washington DC, and the two pieces of news were reported together. The announcement served as dramatic evidence of Pakistan’s support for Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Program intended to mobilize support for the West against the Soviet Union across the developing world.

The Kilbridge study concluded “there does not seem to be much of an economic case for the use of large-plant nuclear power in either East or West Pakistan”.[2] The carefully reasoned report and its damning conclusion was ignored. The American authored First Five Year Plan, covering the period 1955-160, committed Pakistan to an atomic future – the atom was now the marker of development, progress, the future, and of geopolitical alliances. It also gave purpose and budgets and power to the newly created Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. No one bothered to ask people in West or East Pakistan what they might actually want. The planners just decided.

Pakistan’s first Five-Year Plan declared “Planning in the present stage of our society means the formulation of programs and policies designed to lead it by a consciously directed and accelerated movement from a largely technologically backward and feudalistic stage into the modern era of advanced technology now on the threshold of atomic age”.[3] The plan called for setting up “a suitable research reactor … as soon as possible. Eventually there should be two research reactors, one in west Pakistan and the other in East Pakistan”.[4] Priority was clearly given to West Pakistan.

At the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva in 1958, Pakistan announced it planned to acquire a small research reactor to be located in West Pakistan, and a power reactor for East Pakistan.[5] By 1963, the political decision had been made in Pakistan to go ahead with the purchase of two reactors. The guidelines for the Third Five-Year Plan (covering the period 1965-1970) were published, and there were provisions for two reactors – one of 50 MW in the “Western Zone of East Pakistan” and one of 132 MW “to serve Karachi and its suburbs”.[6] Plans evolved quickly, for no apparent reason, and by May of the following year, it was announced that:

“A nuclear power station (70 MW) has been planned to be set up in East Pakistan; a contract for sub-surface investigations and topographical general survey of the area where the station is proposed to be located has been awarded. A nuclear power station (132 MW) is proposed to be established in West Pakistan”.[7]

When it was finally published in 1965, the Third Five-Year Plan identified the planned reactor site in East Pakistan as Rooppur, about 150 kilometers north-west of Dhaka. In May 1965 the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission signed a contract with Canadian General Electric Company for the reactor to be built at Karachi.[8] Since the Plan envisaged spending almost ten times as much on the reactor in West Pakistan as on the reactor planned for East Pakistan, Rooppur would have to wait.

Welcome to the New Dream, Same as the Old Dream

With the war of liberation in 1971, many things changed as East Pakistan became Bangladesh. But the atomic dream did not dim. Soon enough the mantle of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission was taken up by the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), which was created in 1973. Since then successive Bangladeshi governments have been attracted to the idea of a nuclear plant as a modern technological solution to energy shortages in the country, with officials thinking of the possession of a nuclear plant as a marker of national achievement and success and a proof of state power. In 2013, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina termed Rooppur “the nation’s dream”.[9] In 2015, Finance Minister Abdul Muhit declared proudly, “Now, we are on the verge of entering the elite club of the countries who have nuclear power plants.”[10] The makers of Pakistan’s first Five Year Plan would have understood and approved. Only the names had changed.

In the background, supporting and encouraging the elite dreams of nuclear nationhood in Bangladesh, and in many other developing countries, is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Its statute calls for the Agency to “seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world”. The IAEA carried out a planning study in 1974-75 and projected between approximately1200 and 3000 MW of nuclear capacity in Bangladesh by 1995, with nuclear power constituting 47 percent of the country’s electricity capacity in the high projection.[11] This plan came to naught, but it provided an enduring justification for pressing on with the nuclear project at Rooppur. Who after all could argue with the technical analysis of the IAEA?

Also feeding the nuclear dream were the international nuclear reactor vendors and their host countries who hope to profit from the sales of nuclear power plants. The United States, Germany, France, and China have over the decades supported their nuclear industries’ efforts to sell reactors. France, for example, signed an agreement with Bangladesh for the “peaceful use of nuclear energy” in 1980.[12] It offered to sell 125 and 300 MW reactors in the 1980s.[13] In the end, it was Russia that edged out other countries that could have sold Bangladesh a reactor.

The Bangladesh Government announced in 2011 that it would sign a deal with the Russian Government for two 1000 MW nuclear reactor units to be built by 2018 at a cost of US$2 billion.[14] Since then the cost of the reactor has been increasing and the date of commissioning has been getting delayed. In October 2013, a ceremony was held for the formal start of the preparatory stage.[15] Formal construction was then expected to begin in 2015. At the time of the ceremony, the cost of construction was revised upwards and it was suggested that each unit would cost between US$1.5-2 billion.[16] The cost estimates tripled in April 2014, when a senior official at the Ministry of Science and Technology suggested the price was more likely to be US$6 billion.[17] According to a 2015 announcement by the Finance Minister, the target was to have the two Rooppur reactors operational by 2022, and two additional reactors were expected by 2030.[18] Bangladesh’s government has announced that it “has shortlisted eight sites” for the second nuclear power plant; like Rooppur, it will be imported.[19]

It was only in May 2016 that negotiations finally concluded over what had become a US$12.65 billion nuclear project at Rooppur, with Russia making available US$11.385 billion as credit.[20] Russia would provide 90 percent of the funds on credit at an interest rate of Libor plus 1.75 percent. Bangladesh will have to pay back the loan in 28 years with a 10-year grace period. In other words, Russia will be getting paid billions of dollars in profits that will ultimately have to come from taxing Bangladeshi citizens and over-charging electricity consumers.

Russia would provide 90 percent of the funds on credit at an interest rate of Libor plus 1.75 percent. Bangladesh will have to pay back the loan in 28 years with a 10-year grace period. In other words, Russia will be getting paid billions of dollars in profits that will ultimately have to come from taxing Bangladeshi citizens and over-charging electricity consumers.

Russia has also entered into contracts to supply fuel while the reactors are operating.[21] It also will be paid to take back all the spent fuel from the project.[22] This is quite in line with Russia’s practice in other countries and a tidy earner for Moscow.[23] As if profiting from designing, building fueling and waste management services was not enough, in May 2020, JSC Eleron, a Russian company signed a US$287.49 million agreement with the Nuclear Security and Physical Protection System Cell (NSPC) of the Bangladesh Army for the supply of physical protection systems at the Rooppur plant.[24] The market logic is breathtaking – Bangladesh will borrow from Russia to pay Russia to create nuclear hazards and then pay Russia more to help manage these hazards.

Russia is not the only country making money from the Rooppur reactors. India’s Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership is “to provide training and consultancy services for the implementation” of the Rooppur project.[25] The Indian company Larsen & Toubro is to build the transmission lines to carry electricity from Rooppur, with most of the funding for this coming from the Exim Bank of India, but this might result in a delay in the project because of delays in receiving the approval for the financing.[26]

How much will the Rooppur reactors actually cost? There is a long history of underestimating the time and cost it would take to complete a nuclear power plant. One study of construction cost overruns showed that 175 out of the 180 nuclear projects examined had final costs that exceeded the initial budget, on average by 117 percent; they took on average 64% more time than projected.[27] Thus, the final cost of Rooppur may be much higher than the stated figure of $12.65 billion. The actual cost will only be known when the project is actually completed.

The construction cost of the reactor is just the down-payment. There are further costs along the way. The cost of procuring fuel or operating the reactor for example. This is similar to more traditional fossil fueled plants. But what is different about a nuclear reactor is that there are major expenses to be incurred after the reactor stops generating electricity and revenues.

First up is that of decommissioning, which involves defueling the reactor, deconstructing it, and the dismantling it. And then there is the unsettled process of waste management and disposal (discussed later). Decommissioning is “technically complex and poses major challenges in terms of long-term planning, execution, and financing”.[28] Because there is only limited experience with decommissioning reactors, there is no reliable estimate of how much it will cost; projects have invariably cost much more than expected. With Rooppur, one could be looking at a bill of a couple of billion dollars at the very least, not to mention the problem of dealing with all the radioactive waste that is generated in the process.

On Being Trapped in a Never-ending Dream that is a Nightmare

Construction on Rooppur-1 and -2 began in November 2017 and July 2018, respectively.[29] In November 2020, the pressure vessel for Unit 1 was shipped to the site and in January 2021, the internals of the reactor core were delivered.[30] Current schedules suggest that commercial operation for Unit 1 is expected in 2023 and Unit 2 in 2024.[31] The advertised expected operational lifetime of the nuclear plant in Rooppur is sixty years. For these sixty years at least, and possibly longer, the people of Bangladesh will simply have to bear the risk that someday the plant could undergo a disastrous accident releasing large amounts of radioactive materials into the biosphere, contaminating people and land over distances of hundreds of kilometers. Who and where gets poisoned will depend to large measure on the wind direction and the rainfall.

At a basic level, this is but obvious. The world has witnessed catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the ones at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, as well as a host of others that came close to such an outcome. So, there is good reason to associate nuclear power with the possibility of accidents. There are many compilations of failures at nuclear power plants in various countries over many decades.[32] In fact, experience suggests we should expect nuclear accidents.

“Nothing is perfect, no matter how hard people try to make things work, and in the industrial arena there will always be failures of design, components, or procedures.”

The late Charles Perrow, a sociologist who spent a lifetime studying accidents of different kinds, pointed out that, “Nothing is perfect, no matter how hard people try to make things work, and in the industrial arena there will always be failures of design, components, or procedures”.[33] This is common sense—we can all witness things failing—and nuclear plants are no exception.

Accidents follow not only from individual failures, but there are also occasions when multiple safety systems fail at the same time, even with nuclear reactors. This is precisely what happened at Fukushima, where the Tsunami set off what is sometimes termed a common-cause failure of multiple safety systems. Further, the failure of one safety component can trigger failures in other components. As Perrow argued in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States in 1979, these possibilities are hard to envision because of a fundamental characteristic of nuclear reactors: their interactive complexity.[34]

Three implications of this “Normal Accident” view of technology are worthy of emphasis to understand nuclear accidents. First, because of the complexity, the physical conditions that obtain during the operation of a reactor may never be fully comprehended and the understanding that designers or operators of the reactor would always be partial. Second, because system components and phenomena could interact in unanticipated ways, it is not possible to predict all possible failure modes. Therefore, it is not possible to either design the reactor to be safe against such failures or build protection systems that compensate for failures. An obvious corollary is the third implication: numerical estimates of probabilities of catastrophic accidents are unreliable.[35] This means that one should simply disregard expert claims like the chances of a reactor meltdown being one-in-ten-million, or something ridiculously low like that.

The key question that should be posed about nuclear power is not whether it can be safe on paper, but whether it will be safe in the real world, when operated by real, imperfect people, and when the unexpected happens. When this question is viewed against the backdrop of reactors being operated by a variety of organizations with multiple priorities, including cost-cutting and profit-making and rule-following, then it becomes apparent that the answer has to be in the negative.

The key question that should be posed about nuclear power is not whether it can be safe on paper, but whether it will be safe in the real world, when operated by real, imperfect people, and when the unexpected happens. When this question is viewed against the backdrop of reactors being operated by a variety of organizations with multiple priorities, including cost-cutting and profit-making and rule-following, then it becomes apparent that the answer has to be in the negative.

What happened following the nuclear accident at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 provides a good illustration of the scale of potential damage. The accident spread numerous types of radioactive materials, especially iodine and cesium radionuclides, over much of Europe and other parts of the Northern hemisphere. Iodine-131 (I-131), with a short half-life (8 days), was an important contributor to the most apparent health impact of the accident—thyroid cancer amongst children growing up in the contaminated areas. In 2000, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), recorded that there were an “unusually high numbers of thyroid cancers observed in the contaminated areas during the past 14 years” and went on to observe that “the number of thyroid cancers (about 1,800) in individuals exposed in childhood, in particular in the severely contaminated areas of the three affected countries, is considerably greater than expected based on previous knowledge. The high incidence and the short induction period are unusual… If the current trend continues, additional thyroid cancers can be expected to occur, especially in those who were exposed at young ages”.[36] And, indeed, they did. By 2018, UNSCEAR was reporting an increase of over 19,000 cases of thyroid cancer cases over the period 1991–2015, for just the whole of Belarus and Ukraine and for the four most contaminated regions of the Russian Federation, and with incidence among females four times higher than among males.[37] These “form the largest number of cancers of one type, caused by a single event on one date, ever recorded”.[38]

By 2018, UNSCEAR was reporting an increase of over 19,000 cases of thyroid cancer cases over the period 1991–2015, for just the whole of Belarus and Ukraine and for the four most contaminated regions of the Russian Federation, and with incidence among females four times higher than among males.

The main long-term effect was land contamination by the radioactive element cesium-137 (Cs-137), which emits penetrating gamma rays as it decays with a half-life of 30 years. This is why a large population had to be relocated and why large areas continue to be contaminated and closed off even decades later. These also resulted in major economic losses. To give one example, in 2011, Ukraine estimated its losses, including “heavy indirect losses (non-production in power engineering, manufacturing, agricultural, forest, water, and fishing industries, etc)”, as approximately US$232 billion.[39]

Nuclear accidents are global. The estimated collective radiation dose to the entire world from the Chernobyl disaster is 600,000 person-Sievert (Sv).[40] The US National Research Council’s Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Report estimates that the risk from radiation exposure is 0.057 cancer deaths per Sv.[41] Therefore, the collective radiation dose mentioned above would result in roughly 34,000 deaths over a long period of time. Other estimates of expected cancer deaths from Chernobyl are much higher.[42]

The Nuclear Forever

There is a well-known long-term problem that arises with the operation of nuclear reactors: the production of radioactive wastes. This is an inevitable consequence of the generation of nuclear energy; the nuclear reactions that power the reactor also result in fission products being produced. Fission products refers to the radioactive isotopes that are produced when each nucleus of uranium or plutonium breaks apart to produce energy. Another radioactive element, plutonium, is also produced when uranium is converted into heavier elements following the absorption of neutrons and subsequent radioactive decays. Other kinds of radioactive products are produced in various steps of the nuclear fuel chain. Some of these radioactive products have extremely long half-lives, extending in some cases to millions of years, and continue to emit ionizing radiation for that long period of time.

Since radiation is hazardous to health, even at low levels, exposure to these wastes will be harmful to people and other living organisms as long as the wastes remain radioactive.

Since radiation is hazardous to health, even at low levels, exposure to these wastes will be harmful to people and other living organisms as long as the wastes remain radioactive.

Since the 1950s, nuclear establishments have advocated constructing deep underground geologic repositories for disposal of radioactive wastes. But no country has so far constructed any such repository for storing waste from nuclear power plants.[43] Conceptually, a geological repository is essentially a deep hole in which special containers filled with nuclear waste are to be kept basically forever. There remain important uncertainties about the longer-term containment of the long-lived radioisotopes in a geological repository.

In the United States, the standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and by the Environmental Protection Agency include ensuring limits on the amount of radiation people could receive because of the repository for the next hundred thousand years, and in some cases for as long as a million years. Workers at the repository also needed to be kept safe. There also must be physical protection of the repository against threats, including theft and sabotage. There also must be viable plans for dealing with emergencies or accidents.

The fundamental problem with geological disposal is that because the wastes stay radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, any container or waste package will likely corrode within that long timespan. It is only a matter of when, not if, radioactive materials will escape into the biosphere and contaminate ground water sources.

How fast radioactive waste buried in a repository will return to impact human kind and nature is influenced by both the choice of geological media (e.g., granite, volcanic tuff, or clay) and the package in which the materials are emplaced.[44] The hope is that if all of these choices are suitably made (as best we know them today, based on limited knowledge), and the repository is well-designed and executed (as best we can, without foreknowledge) this could allow the nuclear waste to remain isolated from human contact for long enough for most of the radioactive materials to decay into stable substances. Nevertheless, there could be some remnant radiation releases.

Humans could be exposed to radiation from these wastes through “two principal modes”, which are, “1) small, concentrated releases produced by human intrusion (from digging a well either near or into a repository) that could result in large doses of radiation to a few individuals; or 2) the gradual release of radioactivity from the repository into ground water (and ultimately into drinking water or food supplies), leading to very small doses (compared to background radiation) to a large portion of the population”.[45] To do either of these knowingly poses an immense moral burden. The obvious questions are who gets to decide to impose this burden, and how can they be held accountable for it since they will be long gone by the time far in the future when the actual damage is felt.

Developing a nuclear waste repository is a massive undertaking, fraught with risks and unknowns. The United States tried for forty years (1970 to 2010) without success to site a geological repository to deal with some of the radioactive waste produced by its commercial nuclear power plants. It picked a remote site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, to try to be safe. The government spent about $15 billion on research efforts to preparing the technical case for why it could be built. Critics were not convinced and the people of Nevada objected: they did not want to live next to a nuclear waste dump forever. It was discovered that rainwater was leaking deep underground down to where the waste would be stored, and that there had been volcanic eruptions close to the site in the past 100,000 years. Eventually the Obama Administration killed the project.

The limited experience with existing experimental repositories provides examples of unmanageable problems. Given the sheer complexity of the behavior of a repository emplaced with radioactive waste, and the long time-scales involved, it should not be surprising that there would be accidents or failures of one kind or the other.

To do research on a radioactive waste repository Germany picked an old salt mine at Asse and in the 1960s begin to fill it with intermediate and low-level radioactive waste. It was chosen because the salt was supposed to help keep the waste from coming into contact with water which might carry the radioactivity to the surface and affecting people, plants, and animals. It flooded, as critics and local NGOs had warned.[46] All the waste that was being stored there has had to be dug up again at great cost. There was, thus, failure to understand the site itself, and to design the repository. There also was failure of the institution managing nuclear waste. It turned out the company managing the site covered up the flooding problem for a decade. The media eventually uncovered the truth. A senior official with Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection admitted in 2016 “Today, nobody would choose this mine to place radioactive waste.” [47]

In the United States, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for underground nuclear waste storage met an accident in 2014. A drum of radioactive waste exploded and released small quantities of plutonium and ameri­cium, which made their way up from the repository over 650 meters to the surface.[48] The accident is among the costliest in U.S. history. It resulted from a simple, seemingly minor decision to use an organic “kitty litter” absorbent to soak up liquids in the sealed radioactive waste drums — instead of a mineral material.[49] An independent analysis found the more important lesson of the WIPP accident for the purposes of evaluating the safety of proposed repositories is “how difficult it is to predict potential failures of such a disposal system over millennia”.[50]

Some of the problems associated with nuclear waste repositories might not be a concern for Bangladesh because Russia has reportedly agreed to be responsible for taking back the spent nuclear fuel from Rooppur.[51] What will actually happen depends on the exact terms of, and what conditions are imposed in, the agreement with Russia. Because this agreement is unlikely to be made public, it is not possible for the average citizen to know for sure how this will all work out. Deals can get broken, even between governments, and this deal has to hold for sixty years if not more. Sixty years ago, Russia was part of the Soviet Union, and Bangladesh was East Pakistan. What will the next sixty years hold?

There is one other obvious question that is unanswered. Will Russia take back all of the many other streams of nuclear waste that will be generated during Rooppur’s operations, including the radioactive wastes generated during decommissioning, dismantling, and demolishing the reactor decades from now?

There is one other obvious question that is unanswered. Will Russia take back all of the many other streams of nuclear waste that will be generated during Rooppur’s operations, including the radioactive wastes generated during decommissioning, dismantling, and demolishing the reactor decades from now?

The real time scales involved in nuclear energy programs are longer than the terms of governments and government agencies, longer than the lives of countries, beyond even the lifetimes of civilizations, and of the age of humankind so far. No one can plan seriously for this. Today’s nuclear managers know it will be someone else’s problem. The costs of their nuclear dreams will be paid by others. Nuclear choices today create problems for and limit the choices for many future generations. It is in effect the nuclear industry colonizing the future.

References

[1] Maurice D. Kilbridge, “Personal Communication,” April 1, 1998; Maurice D. Kilbridge, The Prospect for Nuclear Power in Pakistan (Washington, D. C.: National Planning Association, 1958).

[2] Kilbridge, The Prospect for Nuclear Power in Pakistan, 55.

[3] National Planning Board, “The First Five Year Plan 1955-1960” (Karachi: Government of Pakistan, 1957), 1–2.

[4] National Planning Board, 577.

[5] United Nations, Proceedings of the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, vol. 8 (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations, 1958), 579.

[6] Planning Commission, “Guidelines for the Third Five Year Plan 1965-1970” (Government of Pakistan, 1963), 81.

[7] Planning Commission, “Mid-Plan Review -Evaluation of Progress During the First Three Years of the Second Five Year Plan” (Government of Pakistan, 1964), 47.

[8] R. J Graham and J. E. S Stevens, “Experience with CANDU Reactors Outside of Canada,” AECL 4901 (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, 1974), 3.

[9] Sheikh Hasina, “PM Sheikh Hasina Inaugurates Rooppur Power Plant,” Awami League, October 2, 2013, http://www.albd.org/index.php/updates/news/281-pm-sheikh-hasina-inaugurates-rooppur-power-plant.

[10] Aminur Rahman Rasel, “Bangladesh Signs Rooppur Deal with Russia,” Dhaka Tribune, December 25, 2015, http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2015/dec/25/bangladesh-signs-rooppur-deal-russia.

[11] Georg Woite, “The Potential Role of Nuclear Power in Developing Countries,” IAEA Bulletin 17, no. 3 (1975): 21–32.

[12] “Political Relation,” Embassy of Bangladesh Paris, 2021, http://bangladoot-paris.org/index.php/bangladesh-france-relations/political-relation.html.

[13] Tim Keeley, “With 300 MW Design Nearly Ready, France Pushes Small Reactors Line,” Nucleonics Week, March 5, 1981.

[14] Bloomberg, “Bangladesh to Sign Deal With Russia to Build Nuclear Power Plant”, 2 November 2011.

[15] BBC, “Bangladesh nuclear power plant work begins”, 2 October 2013.

[16] Bangladesh Awami League, “PM Sheikh Hasina inaugurates Rooppur Power Plant”, see http://www.albd.org/index.php/en/updates/news/281-pm-sheikh-hasina-inaugurates-rooppur-power-plant, accessed 25 March 2015.

[17] The Independent (of Bangladesh), “Roopur N-plant cost to double”, 7 April 2014, see http://www.theindependentbd.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=210774:roopur-n-plant-cost-to-double&catid=129:frontpage&Itemid=121, accessed 25 March 2015.

[18] The Daily Star, “No new in energy”, 5 June 2015, see http://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/no-new-energy-92401, accessed 7 June 2015.

[19] Aminur Rahman Rasel, “Govt Shortlists Eight Sites for Second Nuclear Power Plant,” Dhaka Tribune, September 20, 2016, http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2016/09/20/govt-shortlists-eight-sites-second-nuclear-power-plant/.

[20] NEI, “Russia initials credit agreement with Bangladesh for Rooppur NPP”, 30 May 2016, see http://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsrussia-initials-credit-agreement-with-bangladesh-for-rooppur-npp-4907672/, accessed 2 June 2016.

[21] Energy Bangla, “Nuclear Fuel Supply Deal signed with Russia for RNPP”, 31 January 2019, see http://energybangla.com/nuclear-fuel-supply-deal-signed-with-russia-for-rnpp/, accessed 1 May 2021.

[22] Aminur Rahman Rasel, “Russia to Take Back Radioactive Waste of Rooppur Power Plant,” Dhaka Tribune, March 18, 2017, http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/power-energy/2017/03/18/dhaka-moscow-approve-spent-nuclear-fuel-draft-deal/.

[23] M. V. Ramana and Zia Mian, “Scrambling to Sell a Nuclear Middle East,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 72, no. 1 (2016): 39–43, https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2016.1124659.

[24] The Financial Express, “Rooppur nuke plant: $287.49m deal signed for physical protection system”, 29 May 2020, see https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/national/rooppur-nuke-plant-28749m-deal-signed-for-physical-protection-system-1590767660, accessed 1 May 2021.

[25] Shamsuddoza Sajen, “All You Need to Know about Rooppur Nuclear Power Programme,” The Daily Star, October 16, 2017, https://online.thedailystar.net/supplements/rooppur-nuclear-power-programme/all-you-need-know-about-rooppur-nuclear-power-programme.

[26] Eyamin Sajid, “India’s L&T to Build Transmission Lines for Rooppur Plant,” The Business Standard, January 30, 2021, http://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/indias-lt-build-transmission-lines-rooppur-plant-194038; UNB, “Delays in Rooppur Power Transmission Project Likely,” Dhaka Tribune, October 23, 2020, sec. Nation, https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/nation/2020/10/23/delays-in-rooppur-power-transmission-project-likely.

[27] Benjamin K. Sovacool, Alex Gilbert, and Daniel Nugent, “Risk, Innovation, Electricity Infrastructure and Construction Cost Overruns: Testing Six Hypotheses,” Energy 74 (September 1, 2014): 906–17, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.07.070.

[28] Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt, “The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2020” (Paris: Mycle Schneider Consulting, September 2020), 220, https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/.

[29] Rosatom, “First Concrete Poured at the Constructed Rooppur NPP Site (Bangladesh),” November 30, 2017, http://www.rusatom-overseas.com/media/news/first-concrete-poured-at-the-site-constructed-npp-rooppur-bangladesh.html; Rosatom, “Main Construction of the 2nd Unit of Rooppur NPP Begins with the ‘ First Concrete’ Ceremony,” July 14, 2018, http://rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/main-construction-of-the-2nd-unit-of-rooppur-npp-begins-with-the-first-concrete-ceremony/.

[30] NEI, “Russia ships reactor internals for Rooppur 1”, 21 January 2021, see https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsrussia-ships-reactor-internals-for-rooppur-1-8466401/, accessed 1 May 2021.

[31] Ahmed Humayun Kabir Topu, “40pc of Rooppur Nuke Power Plant Project Completed,” The Daily Star, July 26, 2021, https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/40pc-rooppur-nuke-power-plant-project-completed-2137021.

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