Bulgaria

Belene nuke builder served new contract

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Sofia. Russian company Atomstroyexport, which was picked to build Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant in the Danube town of Belene, said it has signed an annex with national power utility NEK to supply the corpus, steam generator and the turbine for the plant’s first block, as the online English edition of Dnenvik Daily reported.

The Bulgarian party was tight-lipped on the matter.

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IAEA mission inspects Kozloduy NPP

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

An expert mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has started in the Bulgarian NPP Kozloduy. The mission has been invited by the Agency for Nuclear Regulation and by the government following a request of the NPP, to assess the fulfillment of the program for upgrading of its Russian VVER 1000 reactors. The program has been implemented stage-by-stage during repair works in 2002 and 2007.

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Belene equipment ordered with Bulgaria own funds

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Sofia. German company RWE will from now on decide whether to grant the investment promised.
The signing of the shareholding contract for Belene nuclear power plant through which German company RWE will gain 49% of the future plant's stakes, was postponed. Instead of end-October 2008 when the last deadline expired, the paper will most likely be endorsed in December 2008, the project's main investor National Electricity Company (NEC) said, The Banker Weekly reported.

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Bulgaria urges RWE to approve Belene nuclear

Friday, November 7, 2008

SOFIA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Bulgaria urged German power utility RWE on Thursday to reject pressure from green activists and approve a deal to become a strategic investor in a planned 4.0 billion euro ($5.16 billion) nuclear power plant.

Deputy Energy Minister Yavor Kuyumdzhiev said Bulgaria will wait for RWE's supervisory board approval of the deal until the spring of 2009, when construction of the 2,000 megawatt Belene plant should start.

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Train car will be unloaded, radiation source – buried

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Sofia. ‘This is not a rare case, we have such cases once every month’, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency Sergey Tsochev said in an interview for FOCUS News Agency.

There are such problems around the world and they are caused by having a radiation source inside metal scrap.

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Greenpeace says Belene nuclear plant the world's most dangerous-report

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Bulgaria's planned nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube River is amongst the most dangerous contemplated projects of its kind in the whole world, Greenpeace nuclear analyst Heinz Smital has said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.

According to Smital's warning, Belene was massive and irresponsible gamble, which would only tarnish the reparation of RWE, the German company picked as the strategic investor in the nuclear power plant. Far worse, the German company was playing Russian roulette with people's lives in the entire region of South-Eastern Europe, he said.

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Bulgaria dashes to order Belene nuclear powerplant equipment

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Bulgaria and the strategic investor in the Belene nuclear powerplant, German RWE, would put pen to paper as soon as possible, said Mardik Papazyan, executive director of national power grid operator NEK.

The state would add 300 million leva to the operator’s capital so that it could order the equipment, which was expected to long to produce as Russian plants were overwhelmed with orders for Chinese and Turkish nuclear plants, Papazyan said.

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Macedonia to Decide on Bulgarian Nuke

Friday, October 24, 2008

24 October 2008 Skopje _ In the following three months Skopje will decide whether to take part in the construction of the Bulgarian nuclear power plant at Belene that could solve Macedonia´s power shortages in the future.

Macedonia´s deputy prime minister Zoran Stavreski who recently visited Belene said this Friday in his column in the local daily Dnevnik that Macedonia "would participate by financing the project with a certain amount of money. In return, the country would receive part of the electricity produced".

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Belene Nuke Stirs Discord in RWE

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The construction of Bulgaria's second NPP in Belene (the Danube) turned out to be the apple of discord in the energy giant RWE, reported the German Die Welt. The RWE were short-listed as the NPP strategic investor. The company CEO, Jurgen Grossmann plans the company's participation in the project despite the resistance of RWE Supervisory Board.

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Macedonia interested in Bulgarian NPP Belene

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Skopje. The possibility for a future participation of Macedonia in the construction of ther nuclear power plant Belene in Bulgaria will be a topic of discussion during the visit of the Macedonian delegation in Bulgaria, the Macedonian agency Makfax reports.

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