Sure, blame it on the saboteur. There was an article published in DebkaFile today,

Alarm in Tehran and Moscow over Bushehr nuclear reactor’s near-explosion in mid-October

However, something very much like this has happened before with the Russians. Back in late 1980, in Baku, while Azerbaijan was still part of the Soviet Union, there was a UOP CCR (Continuous Catalytic Regeneration) stacked reactor built. The contractor, Litwin-Paris, was required by Machino-import (a Soviet bureaucracy), to use locally manufactured bolts, made in the Soviet Union, rather than to import bolts in with all the other reactor internals. After the reactor dry-out, and prior to catalyst loading, the UOP Chief Advisor entered the reactor to inspect. He found broken bolts at the bottom of the reactor (actually they were stacked reactors). He came out and showed the bolts to all of us, and stopped the startup activities. Litwin then sent the pieces off to have the metallurgy analyzed, and it was determined that the problem occurred in their manufacture, and was manifest when they were heated up. Had the reactor not been inspected after the dry-out, and had the startup continued unabated from that point, then once the system was fully running, and filled with hydrogen & naphtha, it would have exploded in a giant fireball - the resulting destruction, death, and injury would have been catastrophic.

I'm not claiming that this is exactly the same, but it sure looks familiar. Also, to blame it on saboteurs, would take the blame off of others, if it was possibly due to poor metallurgy, or bad design, or improper construction. Similar to the effect of having the suffocating, pervasive Soviet bureaucracy, on industrial quality control, is the effect of having the suffocating, pervasive religious bureaucracy in theocratic Iran, on their industrial quality control.

A similar example was shown and told to me in late 1986 in Baiji, Iraq. I was brought out to the tank-farm, where I saw thousands of large calibre holes in the concrete walls & embankments, and in some of the abandoned tanks. There were gun turrets on top of the walls at the corners. I asked what had happened. It was explained to me that neither the Iraqis nor the Iranians had been properly trained, and were totally unprepared for what happened. At the very beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians sent a significant bomb squadron, of ill-trained pilots, flying over the Tigris, heading their way. They sounded the alarm, and many ill-trained Iraqis ran to the gun turrets, planning to shoot down the Iranians, before they could bomb the large refinery area. I was told that the men really didn't know how to shoot, especially in a combat situation, and all they managed to do was to shoot-up their own place and each other, and they also weren't able to shoot down the Iranians. However, it was further explained to me that the Iranian crews were not trained how to conduct bombing sorties, either, and that all their bombs completely missed the refinery. They told me that this incident revealed to them that it was probably going to be a very protracted war.

Gino