Nuclear Argument Threatens Bulgaria's EU Plans

By Albena Shkodrova

SOFIA, Bulgaria, June 15, 2004 (ENS) - Fears are growing that a political struggle in Bulgaria over the decommissioning of aging reactors at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant on the Danube River may delay or derail Bulgaria's European Union accession.

Over the past year, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), a civic group claiming it has garnered 518,000 signatures to protest against the decommissioning, and a powerful nuclear engineering lobby have united to put pressure on the government to drop its commitment to the EU to decommission four reactors.

While pro-nuclear groups say the commitment to close the reactors was made under duress, few analysts doubt that attempts to renege on the deal would damage Sofia's accession negotiations.

In an opinion poll in February 2004, 46 percent of respondents said keeping the reactors was more important than joining Europe, while only 30 percent took the opposite view.

At the same time, the BSP; President Georgi Purvanov, who is a former BSP leader; the Civic Committee in Defense of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant; and the nuclear lobby have continued a campaign against what was agreed with Brussels.

The Kozloduy nuclear power plant in Bulgaria (Photo courtesy U.S. Energy Department)

The conflict over their future started more than 10 years ago when, in 1992, the G7 declared four of them "non-upgradeable at a reasonable cost" due to structural defects and recommended closure. The EU took up this position.

Bulgaria resisted closure until 1999 when it had to shift its stance to start accession talks with Brussels. The last two governments agreed to shut down the four reactors in pairs, in 2002 and 2006.

But the decision has always been unpopular. A pro-nuclear lobby has successfully identified its own interests with the Bulgarian national interest, and resistance to decommissioning has become a tool for the opposition parties in their struggle against the government.

The BSP - the successor to the old Communist Party, which ruled Bulgaria for more than four decades after the Second World War - remains the largest political party in the country and may well win the 2005 general election, partly thanks to the nuclear issue.

The nuclear power plant was built under communist auspices as a symbol of the "fraternal" relationship they cultivated with the Soviet Union.

In recent months, the Socialists have stepped up the campaign to force the government to abandon its EU commitments, threatening street protests to force it to retain the old reactors.

According to the newspaper "Daily Sega" of May 18, BSP leader Sergey Stanishev said his party would increase pressure on the government to revisit the nuclear issue with Bulgaria's EU partners. "The time for renegotiations was running out," it quoted Stanishev as saying.

The paper said the Socialists wanted a referendum over decommissioning the reactors and would keep them going in defiance of the EU deal if it won the next election.

"The left will use all means available not to close reactors as scheduled," Bulgaria's Mediapool news agency quoted Rumen Ovcharov, deputy chair of the BSP, as saying on March 17.

Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov (Photo courtesy Government of Bulgaria)

The president said completing the Power Engineering Chapter of the EU accession talks had been a tactical mistake by Bulgaria in pursuit of union membership.

The Nivic Committee to Defend the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant has meanwhile collected several hundred thousand signatures in favor of a referendum and called for protests against the decommissioning.

Atanas Semov, the committee's legal counsel, says the group wants to see the energy chapter in the EU reviewed and a popular vote on the plant.

The nuclear power lobby has publicly questioned the EU's opinion on the safety of the plant and presented its own opposing hypotheses.

The lobby links the Civic Committee in Defense of Kozloduy with a range of professional and scientific organizations, such as the Bulgarian Atomic Association, the Bulgarian Atomic Forum and the Bulgarian Power Engineering Forum.

The success of their campaign has dismayed supporters of the reactors' closure. "Their exemplary PR act has turned a national disaster into a national treasure," said Aleksandur Bozhkov, a former industry minister and now co-chaiman of the Centre for Economic Development, a right wing think tank.

"The Kozloduy issue epitomizes the fears of many people about the little known EU," added Svetlozar Kovachev, an analyst with the Euro-Atlantic Civic Foundation.

Kovachev said although the pro-nuclear groups "would not say it in the open," their campaign "has an obvious anti-European connotation."

Ognyan Minchev of the Institute for Regional and International Analyses, another right-of-center think tank, said the BSP campaign contained a large element of bluff, however. "The BSP and the pro-nuclear lobby will not dare to stand up to the EU over the long term," he said.

Minchev said even those working in the nuclear power industry would find they had an interest in the decommissioning process, as the long and expensive task would provide them with a great deal of work. Plans to build a new nuclear plant at Belene will satisfy their long term professional interests, Minchev added.

Though closure is unpopular, public opinion may be more confused than some believe, for while polls say 64 percent oppose shutting the Kozloduy reactors "whatever the price," the same polls say 88 percent still back EU membership.

Bulgarians are divided over the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. (Photo courtesy U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria)

The polling agency said it found 66 percent of the plant's supporters believed preserving it would keep electricity prices low and 53 percent felt the reactors would ensure Bulgaria remained strong in the international energy market. Some 41 percent opposed foreign experts making any decisions on the country's national interests.

Such convictions reflect the information put forward by the plant's champions. Opponents dispute it has much economic value. They point out that throughout the 1990s the plant operated at less 60 percent of capacity, and that a state monopoly on electricity distribution mandated other energy producers to generate less power, simply to provide work for Kozloduy.

Krasen Stanchev, of the Institute for Market Economy, maintains that Kozloduy served Russia's economic interests over those of Bulgaria.

It was, he said, built "because the Soviet Union wanted to use Bulgaria as a middleman for its raw materials en route to the western markets. Petrol, coal, steel, and zinc had to be processed in Bulgaria, and a lot of electricity was needed for that."

EU representatives continue to warn Bulgaria that it must fulfill the deal to close the reactors if it wants to accede to the union in 2007.

On a visit to Bulgaria on June 7, Enlargement Commissioner Guenther Verheugen's spelled this out, "The only consequence of Bulgaria reopening the energy chapter would be delayed accession to the EU," he said.

{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.}