Bulgaria will be building a new, 7th unit at the existing nuclear power plant of Kozloduy. This is one of the last decisions of the Oresharski cabinet, which recently resigned. In relation to the project an agreement was signed at the end of July with U.S. giant Westinghouse. The capacity of the new nuclear unit will be 1100 MW and it will operate for 60 years. During the past week Executive Director at the Kozloduy NPP Ivan Genov announced that if the new unit was built the price of electricity would rise by 10 euro per MWh. The news came as a surprise because previously the project was said to be extremely beneficial for Bulgaria. Not much attention was paid to the details, which often turn out to be of greatest importance.

The details about the new unit remain largely hidden and thus another mega energy project follows the string of similar backroom decisions usually presented to Bulgarians as economic panacea. It is noteworthy that most of these projects are in the energy sector. For example, the 2001 deal for the Maritsa Iztok thermal power plants continues to trouble the sector with its fixed electricity prices for years to come. The situation with the notorious project for a new nuclear power plant at Belene is not much different. Despite the fact the project is frozen, its financial burden is not clearly known as a result of the claims of Rosatom Corp., Russia’s state-run nuclear company, against Bulgaria.

 According to preliminary data, the new American unit in Kozloduy will cost some 4 billion euros. Not much more is currently known. A great number of questions remain unanswered. Is this the final price or inflation would make it rise? Where will revenues go after the unit starts functioning? What would be the compensation if the project was not implemented? What are the risks to the environment, population, economy? And most important: what will happen to spent nuclear fuel? Currently, spent fuel from the functioning two Russian units at Kozloduy is transported to Russia.

 After Bulgaria has afforded the luxury to spend billions on the unfinished construction of the Belene NPP, the citizens of the poorest country in the EU are naturally skeptical when it comes to a new mega-project. One of the main reasons for this skepticism is the lack of any transparency in the Belene project. And instead of learning from its mistake, Bulgaria is about to repeat it. Obviously, continuity and the overcoming of purely political interests in the name of long-term national interests is not a characteristic quality of Bulgaria.

The planned seventh block of the Kozloduy NPP has its geopolitical importance, too. The U.S. investment in Bulgaria could help in the fight against Bulgaria’s negative image of being Moscow’s Trojan horse in the EU due to its energy dependence on Russia. At this backdrop transparency becomes even more important when major infrastructure projects are concerned. Long-term consequences for the economy should be kept in mind, as wells as political interests, because there is no doubt that any project of such scale is political.

English: Alexander Markov