Bulgaria starts shutting down nuclear reactors ahead of EU entry

(KOZLODUY) - Only hours before entering the European Union at the stroke of midnight Sunday, Bulgaria began closing down part of its only nuclear power plant, sacrificing valuable energy exports.

The decision to close two reactors was taken reluctantly but is part of the price of entry to the EU which, with the New Year's Day arrival of Romania and Bulgaria, will grow to 27 members.

Reactors three and four, each with a capacity of 440 megawatts (MW), at the plant at Kozloduy in the northwest of the country will cease to operate because of safety concerns.

Reporters watched as Mityo Hristozov, director of the central operations directorate of the national electric company, told technicians by telephone at 6:00pm (1700 GMT): "You have my permission to start the shutdown of the third and fourth reactors."

Hristozov told reporters both reactors would be turned off at the same time and showed a graphic on which power could already be seen falling, with a yellow and a blue line for the two reactors.

But Hristozov said with a touch of bitterness: "Every child in Bulgaria knows that the reactors are safe and everybody knows that their safety is better than that of 80 percent of the reactors in France," a major user of nuclear power.

The shutdown will slash energy output to a level that will only meet domestic consumption, thus robbing Bulgaria -- the main electricity supplier in the Balkans -- of a valuable souce of export revenue.

Kozloduy director Ivan Genov had earlier said it would take eight years to dismantle the reactors' non-radioactive parts and 25 years to take apart radioactive equipment.

Based on 1992 studies conducted by the G7 group of industrialised nations, the EU believes that reactors of the Kozloduy type cannot be modernised at a reasonable price and should be shut down due to security concerns.

An Alpha Research poll carried out last year said that 75.4 percent of Bulgarians opposed the closure, which follows the shutdown of the two oldest reactors at Kozloduy in 2002 -- also a victim of EU membership negotiations.

Two more modern reactors, each producing 1,000 MW, will be kept running.

Vladimir Branov, an operator on reactor three, said the closure decision was not logical. "Purely political criteria have been applied," he said.

Reactors three and four produce energy that is the cheapest in the Balkans because they have been operating since 1980-82 and their initial cost has been paid off, according to plant's production director Kiril Nikolov, who predicted energy prices from Kozloduy would rise by 19 percent in 2007.

The Bulgarian government has bowed to EU pressure but is looking for extra compensation.

The EU is due to pay Sofia 550 million euros (725 million dollars) to make up for the closure of the four reactors.

Nikolov said however that "it is ridiculous to talk of compensation", since the plant has been stripped of production capacity worth three to four billion euros.

Bulgaria has signed a deal with the Russian company Atomstroyexport, whose subcontractors are Areva and Siemens, to build a second nuclear plant with a 2000 MW capacity, due to enter service around 2012.