Interview with Yassen Atanassov, a founder and activist of the Greens Party, a poet, author and campaigner on green issues. He represented the Greens as a candidate in the recent European and Bulgarian parliamentary elections.

Over the past week, there has been intensive discussion by the new parliament on the future of the proposed Belene Nuclear Power Plant. Understandably, the primary focus seems to have been on economic issues. But, assuming the project is given the go-ahead in some form, what are the other issues we should keep in mind?

Without giving a specialist opinion, especially from the environmental point of view, I want to express my strong opinion from the economic perspective, while bearing in mind the seismic problem that exists in that entire region.

As a citizen and taxpayer I am not clear to what extent this project will provide a return on any investment, to what extent the money that we as citizens put into the project will be returned. This is one aspect of the problem.

The other issue I am profoundly worried about is that I truly believe – indeed, I insist – that Bulgaria should be independent in the field of energy. We may talk about Bulgaria being energy-independent, but I don’t see anything independent in a piece of Bulgarian land being turned de facto into Russian territory. I have seen information from several sources suggesting that is the case.

One thing that is very often overlooked is that ownership of the land beneath the power plant will be transferred to the organization or company that eventually exploits the plant. For example, will we find ourselves in a position identical to the one that was the case with the supply of natural gas?

In other words, we may open the way for Russia via some representative company that it controls in one way or another to put political pressure on Bulgaria.

They may, for example, say that we are not to export the waste nuclear fuel from Belene – we know very well where the nuclear waste depots are in Bulgaria. What if the Russian side refuses to export waste from Bulgaria – what do we do then?

You mention outside political and economic forces. Do you think that the entire Belene NPP project goes against the idea, first of all for Bulgaria itself, and second, as a general EU principle, of diversifying sources of all forms of energy?

Absolutely. At the stage where there is a very serious development of alternative power resources, instead of pouring a huge amount of money into the construction of a new nuclear plant, this same amount of money should, in my opinion, be invested in the building and development of new alternative power sources.

Why? First, there would be no ‘blockage’ of finance; the amount of investment that will be locked into Belene will reach break-even point only after 10 years – in other words, as long as construction of the power plant takes.

Then, at the same time, the good thing about alternative power sources is that they are constructed in a linked chain. That is, you build the first stage and it starts to work immediately; for example, the wind farms in Sunny Beach start working and they generate a return on the investment right away. With the money from that, you start to build the next link, and so on.

In fact, according to analyses conducted by our experts, showing that within a period of 20 years – this is twice the period of construction of the power plant – Bulgaria may rely entirely on non-fossil energy resources, based on alternative power sources. Not only for the sake of ‘purity’, but just because it gives an alternative and, most of all, it is economically more viable.

These ideas have been a part of our pre-election program and campaign.

How do you and the Greens suggest that those ideas about boosting alternative energy in Bulgaria be implemented?

First of all, those sources must be combined and coordinated. Second, each and every one of them must be in compliance with the conditions of every specific region. This is very important to us as environmentalists.

At the moment, there is ‘unclean’ money being put into those alternative power sources. Also, very often, such alternative power facilities are built in places where they should not be.

This is the case with the wind park close to Shabla where the wind generators have been built on the route of migrating birds. Things like that must not be allowed.

We – the Greens – are the only ones that look at the issue from two sides. On the one hand, it is fine – alternative energy! But, on the other hand, we follow very closely where these parks and generators and solar batteries are being built so that they do not obstruct nature. It’s regrettable that there is “mutri” (i.e. gangster) money or dirty capital invested in alternative power sources in the wrong places as far as nature is concerned.

Bulgaria is already committed to Natura 2000. Is this enough to safeguard Bulgaria’s national environment?

I think that the scope of Natura 2000 should be expanded because if, for example, the land belongs to one person in a certain country, those migrating birds belong to the whole world, they are our world heritage. We are all part of a common natural complex and we should not selfishly stand in the way of the development of a global process.

Our program for the European elections especially emphasized the ideal that there should not be a lowering of minimum environmental thresholds. On the contrary, we should not, for example, lower the minimum limits for carbon emissions in order to encourage business in the present economic crisis in some way.

In my view, those environmental requirements should be tightened. I think that next year the EU is going to revise its environmental requirements and alternatives altogether.

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