Bulgarian Court Ruling Halts Nuclear Closure Plan

SOFIA, Bulgaria, March 31, 2003 (ENS) - A ruling by Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court, overturning an earlier government decision to close two nuclear power reactors by 2006, has cast doubts over the country's planned accession to the European Union scheduled for 2007.

The court's decision, revealed on Friday, confirms an interim ruling made by a smaller panel of judges from the same court in January.

The January decision upheld a challenge made to the government's plans by Bulgaria's Socialist opposition party, based on a parliamentary voting technicality. The anti-EU ex-communist party has strong links with the nuclear industry.

Bulgaria's Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (Photo courtesy American University)

Bulgaria's accession was delayed from 2006 until 2007 by EU heads of government at a summit last December in Copenhagen.

The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is located in northern Bulgaria near the Danube River adjoining Romania. A deal for the closure of four of Bulgaria's Kozloduy reactors was agreed by the EU and the Bulgarian government in 1999. Bulgaria shut down the first and second reactors at Kozloduy on December 31, 2002.

The EU has repeatedly stressed that the 2006 deadline for achieving this is a condition of Bulgaria's accession to the EU the following year.

No one from the Bulgarian government was available to comment on the decision.

The Soviet designed Kozloduy power plant, which is now run by the National Electric Company, had a troubled operating history in the early 1990s. Four of the plant's six units are of the older 440 Mwe VVER 440 design; two are of the 1000 MWe VVER 1000 design. The older reactors are the ones the European Union wants closed before Bulgaria becomes a member state.

Workers mount neutron detectors within Kozloduy's Unit 6 (Photo courtesy Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

The mission also found that 217 workers had received excessive exposure to radiation over the plant's operating life. More recently, at least five areas of radioactive contamination have been found in the plant.

A June 1991 IAEA mission found Kozloduy's four VVER-440 units in such poor physical condition, and safety deficiencies so serious, that it recommended they be shut down until improvements were made. With funding assistance from the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the European Union, France and Germany, the units were upgraded and reopened.

But concerns about the safety of these four reactors remains. They have no emergency core cooling systems or auxiliary feed water systems similar to those required in Western nuclear power plants. There is concern about gradual weakening of the reactor pressure vessel surrounding the nuclear fuel, due to lack of internal stainless steel cladding and use of low alloy steel with high levels of impurities.

Plant instrumentation and controls, safety systems, fire protection systems, and protection for control room operators are below Western standards. The quality of materials, construction, operating procedures and personnel training are considered below Western standards.

Nuclear power supplies nearly 46 percent of the electricity produced by Bulgaria's National Electric Company.

A history of safety issues at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is online at: http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb4/NEISB_4.5.A1.html

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}