Nuclear power in Europe

NPP Belene meets the highest requirements for third generation NPPs, Harmut Pam, vice president of ‘Nuclear Power Plants’ department at RWE Power, said. The Bulgarian government has chosen RWE Power as the main investor in the construction of the second NPP in Bulgaria. Harmut Pam gave a lecture before the 3rd Annual European Conference on ‘Next NPPs generation’ currently taking place in Sofia. According to RWE Power’s strategy, NPP Belene will meet all safety and long-term exploitation requirements, Harmut Pam said. He also pointed out that the development of EU energy production needed secure supply, stable prices of raw materials and climate protection.

SOFIA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - French power giant GDF Suez said on Tuesday it would decide whether to share a stake in a Bulgarian nuclear project with RWE after examining a deal agreed between the German utility and Sofia.

The Bulgarian government last month chose RWE to become a strategic partner for a 49 percent stake in the planned Belene plant and gave the option to split the stake with the second-listed bidder, Belgian Electrabel, owned by GDF Suez. (more…)

Bulgaria’s sole nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River said on November 14 that it paid back early a $52.5 million loan to Russia’s state-owned Roseximbank, which it took to upgrade its two working 1000MW reactors.

The reason for the early repayment of the loan, due in 2021, was avoiding currency risks, the plant said, as quoted by website mediapool.bg. The loan was denominated in US dollars, while its revenue was in leva and euro, the plant operator said. (more…)

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. (more…)

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.

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)