Sofia seeks more time for closure

Date: 08/04/1999

By Simon Taylor

BULGARIA might be able to close down two of its high-risk nuclear reactors at the Kozloduy site by 2008 - ten years after the original 1998 deadline for shutting them down - but wants to go on operating two others beyond that date.

The country's Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Kissiov told European Voice that closing the first two units by 2008 "might be a realistic compromise".

Until recently, the European Commission had been insisting that Sofia must close the plant, built to Russian specifications in the Soviet era, as soon as possible following an international agreement to shut down the reactors by 1998.

But the Bulgarian government has managed to convince officials that it needs more time to take the units out of service. It argues that more international aid is necessary to finance the closure and to replace the lost generating capacity.

The Commission has agreed to set up a special working group of EU and Bulgarian officials to work out a new timetable for closure. Kissiov said the group, to be chaired by Commission officials, would discuss a "realistic closure plan", stressing that the timetable would depend on the availability of funding and special new technology for treating nuclear waste.

Kissiov insisted that units at Kozloduy posed less of a danger than other Soviet-era reactors such as the Ignalina plant in Lithuania, which the EU also wants closed.

Arguments over the atomic reactors have soured Sofia's relations with the EU. Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov recently attacked the Union for its attitude towards his country's bid for accession, saying the EU had done nothing for Bulgaria and criticising the demand for the plant to be shut down as a "meaningless diktat".