Bulgaria insists on a fixed price for the construction of two new Westinghouse AR-1000 nuclear reactors, which should not exceed $14 billion, as part of an intergovernmental agreement on nuclear cooperation between Bulgaria and the United States signed in Sofia on Monday (12 January).
The new reactors will be erected on the banks of the Danube River where the Kozloduy NPP is located and will operate in parallel with the two Russian reactors until 2050. After that, the old Russian reactors will be decommissioned. Andrew Light, Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs at the US Department of Energy, stated:
We think Bulgaria can be a regional leader in the field of nuclear research and a regional energy hub.
Bulgarian Energy Minister Rumen Radev, stated that the government wanted to sign a contract for the construction of new nuclear facilities at a fixed price, which should not exceed $14 billion. The new VII block of the Kozloduy NPP should go into operation at the end of 2034, Radev claimed.
The agreement between Bulgaria and the US covers co-operation in the installation of small modular reactors in industry, reactor decommissioning, recycling and storage of spent nuclear fuel, joint nuclear research and personnel exchanges.
Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov announced back in October that Greece, Serbia and North Macedonia were interested in signing long-term contracts to purchase electricity from the future Units VII and VIII of the Kozloduy NPP.
Denkov also noted that Bulgaria would use the two new reactors as the base capacity of the energy system during the phase-out of coal.
