Bulgaria hopes for climb down as report declares reactors safe

Date: 12/09/02

By David Cronin

BULGARIA is hoping a new study declaring its two most disputed nuclear reactors as safe will convince the European Commission to drop its demands for their closure by 2006.

The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has assessed work on improving the Kozloduy complex over the past decade and concluded its staff are dedicated 'to giving the highest priority to safety issues on a continuing basis'.

While the Commission has been insisting that units three and four at the Soviet-era plant cease operations in the next four years if the country is to be admitted into the EU, Sofia is planning to use the IAEA report to secure a change of mind.

'We have not been treated very fairly [by the Commission],' Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister Nikolay Vassilev told European Voice.

'The experts say that the plant is safer than the Commission would like to believe. I think this issue has to be resolved in the foreseeable future.'

Kozloduy's management estimates more than €700 million will have been spent on upgrading the reactors in 1991-2006.

The Vienna-based IAEA has found that the plant, which uses so-called VVER technology from the Soviet era, has undergone substantial modernisation and that close attention is being paid to planning for possible emergencies there.

Under a 1999 agreement, Bulgaria and the European Commission are resolved to reaching a conclusive accord on the reactor's future by the end of this year.

Kozloduy was identified as one of the most risky nuclear plants in central and Eastern Europe by the US Department of Energy in 1995.

But a top official in Bulgaria's energy ministry believes such a claim is no longer valid.

'The issues raised 10 years ago justifying the statement that Kozloduy was dangerous have already been amended to the extent that the IAEA is now making a completely different statement,' said Slavtcho Neyko, the department's secretary-general.

In April the Commission's chief negotiator with Bulgaria, Morten Jung-Olsen, denied that the EU executive was putting 'unjustified' pressure on Sofia over the reactors. Brussels, he added, was willing to help defray their decommissioning costs.

Bulgaria is hoping a new study declaring its two most disputed nuclear reactors as safe will convince the European Commission to drop its demands for their closure by 2006.