The contract to manage the design of a new national nuclear waste disposal facility in Bulgaria has been awarded to an experienced consortium Monday.

The consortium comprising Empresarios Agrupados Internacinal SA, VT Nuclear Services and ENPRO Consult of Bulgaria has won a contract to manage the design of a new national disposal facility for low level and intermediate level waste, Nuclear Engineering International reported.

The three year contract is valued at EUR 2.6M. It will see the consortium work with the Bulgarian State Enterprise for Radioactive Waste (SERAW) to select a suitable site for the near surface repository and prepare environmental impact assessments, as well as manage the technical design of the new facility and the public consultation process.

Bulgaria currently has two operating reactors, Kozloduy 5 and 6, which produced 32% of the country electricity in 2008 according to the IAEA. There are four other VVER-440 units at the site. Units 1 and 2 were shutdown at the end of 2002 and are currently being decommissioned, with units 3 and 4 shutdown at the end of 2006, both as conditions for Bulgaria's accession into the EU. A new Russian-designed reactor is being built at Belene and is due to begin operation in 2014.

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