Bulgaria’s two US nuclear reactors to cost under $14 billion

Bulgaria is insisting on a fixed price for the construction of two new Westinghouse AR-1000 nuclear reactors, which should not exceed $14 billion, according to an intergovernmental agreement on nuclear cooperation between Bulgaria and the US signed in Sofia on Monday night.

The new reactors will be built on the banks of the Danube, where the Kozloduy nuclear power plant is located. They will operate in parallel with the two Russian reactors until 2050. After 2050, the old Russian reactors will be decommissioned.

“We think Bulgaria can be a regional leader in the field of nuclear research and a regional energy hub,” commented Andrew Light, who is assistant secretary of energy for international affairs at the US Department of Energy.

Bulgarian Energy Minister Rumen Radev commented that the government wants to sign the contract for the construction of the new nuclear facilities at a fixed price, which should not exceed $14 billion.

This is the biggest investment in the last 50 years for Bulgaria, which is expected to reach a GDP of just over €100 billion this year.

Until ten years ago, Bulgaria was planning to build a nuclear power station with two new Russian nuclear reactors delivered five years ago by Russia’s Atomstroyexport, but the war in Ukraine changed everything. Now the plan is to sell the Russian reactors to Ukraine, which is considering paying for them with EU aid.

The agreement between Bulgaria and the US covers cooperation in the installation of small modular reactors in industry, decommissioning of reactors, processing and storage of spent nuclear fuel, joint nuclear research and exchange of personnel.

Radev says that the new VII block of the Kozloduy NPP should enter into operation at the end of 2034.

Light commented that the benefits of building two new nuclear units far outweighed the billion-dollar investment. He added that it is about opening a huge number of new jobs and the development of Bulgarian experience in nuclear technologies, which will make the country a leader in the region.

The price of electricity produced by the new reactors will be around €65/MWh which has led to criticism as the price is much higher than that of electricity from renewable sources. The Bulgarian government claims that the country cannot be left without baseload electricity after the Russian nuclear units are shut down.

On 2 February, the director of the NPP, Valentin Nikolov, announced that so far five companies had unofficially expressed interest in building the new reactors. Of these, only one is European – Electricite de France.

The others are the US company Bechtel, with which Westinghouse is working on the AP-1000 projects in Poland and the Czech Republic, and Korea’s Hyundai, with which Westinghouse is also working. The others are China’s CNNC and the US company Fluor, which owns NewScale, a company developing small modular reactors.

In an interview with Euractiv Bulgaria in October, Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov said that Greece, Serbia and Northern Macedonia were interested in concluding long-term contracts for the purchase of electricity from the future units VII and VIII of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

Asked whether it would be possible to obtain European funding for the construction of the new facilities, Denkov said that this was not a major issue as the project was “quite promising” for the state from an economic point of view.

He explained that Bulgaria will use the two new reactors as the base capacity of the energy system during the gradual phasing out of coal.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

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