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An official from the state electric company, Tavanir, said the Bushehr plant shut down on Saturday and would remain closed “for three to four days”. Gholamali Rakhshanimehr added power outages could happen but did not explain any further.
This marks the first time Iran has reported an emergency shutdown of the plant.
Tavanir released a statement on Sunday saying the nuclear plant was being repaired but did not offer any further details.
They said the repair work would take until Friday.
The Bushehr plant went online in 2011 with help from Russia, who also produces the uranium.
Construction of the plant began under Iran’s shah in the mid-1970s but after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the plant was repeatedly targeted in the Iran-Iraq war.
While the plant has been periodically shaken by earthquakes, there have been no reports of a tremor reported in the area in recent days.
According to reports, the plant is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Back in March, nuclear official Mahmoud Jafari said the plant would stop working since Iran cannot procure parts and equipment for it from Russia.
READ MORE: Iran busted for nuclear weapons stockpile at ‘secret’ sites
Former US President Donald Trump introduced a number of sanctions on Iranian oil exports which have crippled Tehran’s economy.
The Iranian Parliament recently passed a law which if implement would expand Tehran’s nuclear programme and limit the monitoring access of the IAEA.
Under Iran’s nuclear deal with major powers, Tehran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at the underground plant.
These are also the only machines Iran can accumulate enriched uranium with.
However, in December Iran told the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog it plans to install three more clusters of advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
The agency wrote: “Iran informed the Agency that the operator of the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz ‘intends to start the installation of three cascades of IR-2m centrifuge machines’ at FEP.”
They added these were in addition to one of IR-2m machines already used for enrichment there.
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “The person who makes the decision about whether Iran will go back into the Iran nuclear deal, will assume its nuclear obligations under international law, is not the president of Iran, it is the supreme leader of Iran, and that person did not change from before the election.”
On Sunday, Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called on world powers to “wake up” to the perils of returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran.
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