Article by www.energia.gr

(23/12/2006)

Two hours before Bulgaria enters the European Union on January 1, it will close down part of one of its main nuclear reactors, sacrificing valuable energy exports.

The decision has been made reluctantly but is part of the price of entry to the Union which, with the New Year arrival of Romania and Bulgaria, will grow to 27 members.

Reactors 3 and 4, each with a capacity of 440 megawatts (MW), at the plant at Kozloduy in the northeast of the country will cease to operate for security reasons.

Their output "is roughly equal to the annual energy exports of the country," the plant's production director Kiril Nikolov told AFP.

Bulgaria is the chief supplier of electricity to the Balkan states. Based on 1992 studies conducted by the G7 group of industrialized nations, the EU believes that reactors of this type (VVER 440-230) cannot be modernized at a reasonable price and should be shut down due to safety concerns.

That assessment is not shared by Nikolov, who noted that three independent committees - of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Association of Nuclear Operators and the European Commission's group on nuclear security - had given a "positive opinion" on the state of the reactors.

As part of EU membership negotiations, Bulgaria closed down at the end of 2002 its two oldest reactors at Kozloduy. Reactors 3 and 4 will follow suit on December 31, despite the significant investment already made in their modernization. Two more modern reactors, each producing 1,000 MW, will be kept running.

To make up for the absence of any confinement facilities, reactors 3 and 4 have been equipped with a cooling system which should rule out any radioactive leaks, according to Vladimir Uruchev, head of operations at Kozloduy. "We had hoped that the functioning of the reactors would be maintained, now we are resigned" to their shutdown, Uruchev said.

Vladimir Branov, an operator on Reactor 3, said the closure decision lacked logic. "Purely political criteria have been applied," he said.

That view is widely shared by the public at large and is "the chief reason behind Euroskepticism," according to political scientist Andrei Raichev. The EU is due to pay Sofia -550 million ($725 million) to make up for the closure of the four reactors and encourage economy in the use of energy. In the view of Nikolov, "it is ridiculous to talk of compensation," since the plant has been stripped of production capacity worth -3--4 billion. European diplomats in Sofia say the issue is closed.

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