Itar-Tass
By Vladimir Rogachov

Russia will return to Bulgaria the products of nuclear waste vitrification from Bulgaria's nuclear power plant at Kozlodui after a period of several dozen years, an official spokesman for the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry said in an interview with Itar-Tass Tuesday.

The return will begin after all the waste that Russia received from Kozlodui is fully recycled, the spokesman said.

He stressed that his ministry had not sent any official notification to Bulgaria that a part of irradiated nuclear fuel, brought to the Krasnoyarsk nuclear chemistry plant at the end of last year, might be re-exported back to Kozlodui.
Said the spokesman: "All the fuel has been imported from Bulgaria in strict compliance with the contract on its recycling here and with effective laws. A possibility of taking absorption rods back to Bulgaria has never been discussed. They will lose their radiation charge within the matter of next few months. These rods are part of fuel assemblies".

The Atomic Energy Ministry came up with its comments following an Itar-Tass report from Sofia which quoted the Kozlodui nuclear plant's press officers as saying the plant had not received official notification from Russia on the plans to return some amounts of fuel Bulgaria.

The Kozlodui press service had reacted to stories in the Russian media which claimed the consignment of waste fuel from the nuclear plant contained some "incombustible absorbents" posing extreme environmental danger.

The Kozlodui plant Executive Director, Jordan Kostadinov, said that the absorbents in question were parts of fuel pins, the fuel for which is imported from Russia. "Bulgaria does not have the technology to retrieve them right at the plant. While shipping them to Russia, we strictly observe all the safety parameters set by the Bulgarian and Russian nuclear supervision agencies," Kostadinov said.

The Kozlodui plant is supposed to pay 24.8 million U.S. dollars for the 41 tonnes of fuel exported to Russia in November. Two-thirds of the amount have been remitted to Russian banks and the remaining part will be paid until end-January.

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