Bulgaria faces the realistic prospect of being obliged to pay EUR 1 B in damages after the delayed nuclear plant project Belene ended up in Paris-based ICC International Court of Arbitration, Russian media comments.

Russia's state nuclear company Atomstroyexport took earlier this month Bulgaria to an arbitration court for EUR 58 M over delayed payments for its work on two nuclear reactors.

"In case of failure of the project, trials may continue for several years and claims could tower to EUR 1 B," Russian Komersant newspaper reported on Monday.

In the middle of June Bulgaria said that Belene nuclear project will be frozen for another three months as of July to have time to catch up with the back office work and get more information about the cost of the project.

Bulgaria and Russia have been unable to agree on the major bone of contention - the price for the construction of the 2000-MW Belene NPP.

Russia says the project construction price should be EUR 6.3 B. The Borisov government wants to set the price at as little as EUR 5 B.

After it was first started in the 1980s, the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube was stopped in the early 1990s over lack of money and environmental protests.

After selecting the Russian company Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Rosatom, to build a two 1000-MW reactors at Belene and signing a deal for the construction, allegedly for the price of EUR 3.997 B, with the Russians during Putin's visit to Sofia in January 2008, in September 2008, former Prime Minister Stanishev gave a formal restart of the building of Belene. At the end of 2008, German energy giant RWE was selected as a strategic foreign investor for the plant.

The Belene NPP was de facto frozen in the fall of 2009 when the previously selected strategic investor, the German company RWE, which was supposed to provide EUR 2 B in exchange for a 49% stake, pulled out.

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