Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant

Reactor data

History

The nuclear power plant Kozloduy was the first nuclear power plant in Bulgaria and in Southeast Europe. The beginning of Bulgarian nuclear energy was established on July 15, 1966, with the signing of an agreement on cooperation between Bulgaria and the then-Soviet Union for the construction of a nuclear power plant. After a detailed technical and economic analysis, the construction site was chosen to be on the Danube River near Kozloduy.

The Soviet Union provided the main equipment, and individual equipment was supplied by the then-German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Ground was first broken on October 14, 1969, and in April 1970, large-scale construction activities began, in which over a hundred thousand workers and engineers participated.

Safety concerns and consequent shutdown of Units 1 to 4

Kozloduy NPP previously operated four older reactors of the VVER-440/230 design, but under a 1993 agreement between the European Commission and the Bulgarian government, Units 1 and 2 were taken off-line at the beginning of 2004. An unpublished 1995 report by the United States Department of Energy had supposedly listed those units among the world's "ten most dangerous reactors".{{cite news | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110323002613/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6DE1F3FF930A15754C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all | archive-date = 2011-03-23 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120401103141/http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=28661 | archive-date = 2012-04-01 | url-status = live

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Units 3 and 4, originally licensed for operation until 2011 and 2013, respectively, underwent substantial safety improvements and, after rigorous inspections, received positive reviews from the IAEA{{cite news | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090214213250/http://iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2002/prn0210.shtml | archive-date = 2009-02-14 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090121015155/http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf87.html | archive-date = 2009-01-21 | url-status = live

82 metric tons of its spent fuel were sent to a repository in Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai during 2001 and 2002. In 2008, officials at the power plant announced their intention to use CONSTOR storage casks for this purpose.

Prior to the shutdown of units 3 and 4, Kozloduy NPP produced 44% of Bulgaria's electricity supply; as of March 2006, Bulgaria exported about 14% of its electricity production.

Pressure to restart

In January 2009, during the 2008 Bulgarian energy crisis, Bulgaria's president Georgi Parvanov suggested that Unit 3 be restarted.{{cite news | access-date = 2009-01-07 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090107102038/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7814477.stm | archive-date = 2009-01-07 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110522020438/http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2005:157:0203:0220:EN:PDF | archive-date = 2011-05-22 | url-status = live

Units 5 and 6

Units 5 and 6 are VVER-1000 reactors, construction of which finished in 1987 and 1991 respectively. By 2017 Unit 5 was to be upgraded to reach a capacity of 1,100 MWe, as part of a programme to extend the life of the unit by 30 years.

In 2021 an alternative secondary fuel supply agreement was made with Westinghouse Electric Company, for supply diversification, and as of 2023 is seeking regulatory approval for the new fuel.

On 30 December 2022, an agreement was made with Framatome to supply fuel and fuel assemblies for Unit 6 of the Bulgarian Nuclear Power Plant.

Ownership

Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is a subsidiary of Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD.{{cite news | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080214231730/http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=90355 | archive-date = 2008-02-14 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081018202248/http://pepei.pennnet.com/display_article/320064/6/ARTCL/Display/none/1/Bulgaria-announces-birth-of-energy-giant-with-new-holding-company/ | archive-date = 2008-10-18 | url-status = dead

Future expansion

In 2012 Bulgaria's government decided to start the construction of a new reactor in Kozloduy after it gave up on the construction of what was supposed to be the country's second nuclear power plant in Belene. Thus, the Bulgarian government decided to install in Kozloduy the 1000 MW reactor that the Russian state company Atomstroyexport already produced for the Belene NPP. The Belene Nuclear Power Plant project was terminated in late March 2012.

In October 2013, the Ministry of Environment and Water approved the environmental impact assessment report on the investment proposal for Unit 7, thereby giving a green light for its construction. A month later it was announced that construction of the reactor could begin in 2019 if full approval is granted by the Council of Ministers in 2014. The Bulgarian Energy Holding (short BEH) propose to construct a Westinghouse AP1000. Negotiations between the BEH and Westinghouse already started.

In 2013 the Austrian Environment Agency prepared a report on the Bulgarian Ministry for the Environment's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the proposed 7th unit of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant. It assesses whether the EIA-Report allows for making reliable conclusions about the potential trans-boundary impacts on Austria. The Austrian report considers the assumption, that the Kozloduy NPP site is flood-proof, to be well-founded and the seismic hazard at the site to be low (but points out that the seismic hazard study needs updating as it was performed 20 years ago). It also highlights a number of unsubstantiated claims and some failings in the Bulgarian EIA report. These include:

• shortcomings in the safety analyses of the reactors being considered, including a lack of the consideration of post-Fukushima lessons learned and, as far as applicable, the use of the concept of practical elimination (pgs 60-61);
• serious gaps in the assessment of the impact of external human induced events such as crashes, leaks etc. (pgs 72-73);
• contrary to IAEA (2002) analysis requirements, the EIA report does not contain considerations about the formation of pressure shock waves and their possible impact on buildings of the NNU due to explosions outside the perimeter of the NPP (pg 73)
• no comprehensible technical basis provided for an evaluation of design basis accidents and severe accidents (pg 84)
• only three (insufficient) “typical” dry case weather conditions were used for the calculations of the trans-boundary impacts on the Austrian territory, not worst case scenarios.

References

References

1. link. (2012-04-17 , Novinite, 28 March 2012)
2. "Kozloduy NPP Plc - History".
3. "Bulgaria weighs merits of Belene NPP or Kozloduy extension".
4. "Bulgaria to pay up to 601.6 mln euro to Atomstroyexport for scrapped Belene project by Dec 25".
5. Vujasin, Mihajlo. (2022-02-16). "Bulgaria abandons Belene, announces new reactors at Kozloduy".
6. "Kozloduy NPP EAD 2016 Annual Report".
7. "Nuclear Reactors in Bulgaria". World Nuclear Association.
8. Glenn E. Schweitzer. (2005). "An international spent nuclear fuel storage facility: exploring a Russian site as a prototype : proceedings of an international workshop". [[National Academies Press]].
9. (2008). "The English Language Bulletin of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant".
10. (22 October 2015). "Russia contracted to upgrade Bulgarian reactors". Nuclear Engineering International.
11. (5 February 2021). "Westinghouse signs VVER fuel licensing contract". World Nuclear News.
12. (18 August 2023). "Bulgaria's regulator requires further documents on Westinghouse nuclear fuel". Nuclear Engineering International.
13. (4 January 2023). "Kozloduy and Framatome sign nuclear fuel agreement". World Nuclear News.
14. (30 December 2022). "Nucléaire: la Bulgarie signe un accord inédit avec Framatome pour s'affranchir du combustible russe". World Nuclear News.
15. "Bulgaria to Set Up Project Company for New Kozloduy N-Plant Unit - Novinite.com - Sofia News Agency".
16. (3 October 2013). "Bulgaria's Environment Ministry OKs EIA Report on Unit 7 of Kozloduy NPP".
17. "Business.dir.bg - бизнес новините на Dir.bg".
18. (11 December 2013). "Bulgaria to begin talks with Westinghouse on new Kozloduy nuclear reactor".
19. [http://www.umweltbundesamt.at/fileadmin/site/umweltthemen/umweltpolitische/ESPOOverfahren/UVP_kozloduy7/REP0449_Kozloduy7_FSN_Kern_final.pdf "Kozloduy NPP – Construction of unit 7: Expert Statement to the Environmental Impact Assessment Report"] {{Webarchive. link. (2014-02-27 Andrea Wallner, Helmut Hirsch Adhipati Y. Indradiningrat, Oda Becker, Mathias Brettner, Environment Agency Austria, 2013)