Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant
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The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is a
nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...
in
Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
situated north of
Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...
and east of
Kozloduy Kozloduy ( ) is a town in northwest Bulgaria, located in Vratsa Province, on the Danube River. The city was liberated from Ottoman rule on 23 November 1877 by the Romanian Army under the command of the Imperial Russian Army. Kozloduy is best kno ...
, a town on the
Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
river, near the border with
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
. It is the country's only nuclear power plant and the largest in the region. The construction of the first reactor began on 6 April 1970. Kozloduy NPP currently manages two
pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water reactor, light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary ...
s with a total gross output of 2000 
MWe The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Watt ...
and 1966 MW net. Units 5 and 6, constructed in 1987 and 1991 respectively, are
VVER The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from russian: водо-водяной энергетический реактор; transliterates as ; ''water-water power reactor'') is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally de ...
-1000 reactors. 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. A seventh 1,000 MW unit may be installed, using parts from the terminated
Belene Belene ( bg, Белене ) is a town in Pleven Province, Northern Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Belene Municipality. The town is situated on the right bank of the Danube river, close to the town of Svishtov. Ge ...
project for which Bulgaria has paid 600 M EUR. An eighth unit is also under consideration. The older and smaller Units 1 to 4 were all shut down by 2007. Two spent fuel storage facilities are part of the power plant.


Reactor data


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 The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...
had supposedly listed those units among the world's "ten most dangerous reactors". On 21 October 2010, licenses for the shutdown reactors were transferred to Bulgaria state radioactive waste enterprise DP RAO, signaling the formal beginning of decommissioning work. 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 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...
in 2002, and from the
World Association of Nuclear Operators The World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) is a not for profit, International organization, international organisation with a mission to maximize the safety and reliability of the world’s commercial nuclear power plants. The organization ...
(WANO) in the following year, concluding that "no technical reasons exist for the early closure of units 3 & 4". Backed by these findings, the government had hoped to convince the European Commission to allow a postponement of the agreed pre-accession shutdown; from a legal and political standpoint, however, this proved untenable. Units 3 and 4 were taken out of operation in the final hours of 2006, immediately prior to the country's accession to the European Union. 82
metric tons The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United States ...
of its
spent fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor a ...
were sent to a repository in
Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai Zheleznogorsk (russian: Железного́рск), is a closed town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, with a developed nuclear industry. The town has a population of History The town was formerly known as Krasnoyarsk-26 (). It was established in ...
during 2001 and 2002. In 2008, officials at the power plant announced their intention to use
CONSTOR Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that a ...
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 The 2008 Bulgarian Energy Crisis was a crisis in Bulgaria. The crisis affected more than a million households, mainly in the capital Sofia but also in Burgas, Pleven, and Vratsa. As of late September 2008, the issue was not resolved. Background ...
, Bulgaria's president
Georgi Parvanov Georgi Sedefchov Parvanov ( bg, Георги Седефчов Първанов, ) (born 28 June 1957) is a Bulgarian historian and politician who was President of Bulgaria from 2002 to 2012. He was elected after defeating incumbent Petar Sto ...
suggested that Unit 3 be restarted. However, this was never pursued as an option. In principle, under the conditions of its Accession Treaty Bulgaria could request temporary derogation from its commitments in the event of serious economic difficulties arising within the first three years of membership in the union.


Units 5 and 6

Units 5 and 6 are
VVER The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from russian: водо-водяной энергетический реактор; transliterates as ; ''water-water power reactor'') is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally de ...
-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 Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includi ...
, for supply diversification.


Ownership

Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is a subsidiary of
Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD (BEH EAD) is a state owned energy holding company in Bulgaria. It was incorporated on 18 September 2008 after renaming Bulgargaz Holding EAD. In November 2009, the Bulgarian Government decided to list the company at t ...
.


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 The Belene Nuclear Power Plant ( bg, Атомна електроцентрала „Белене“) is a planned nuclear power plant 3 km from Belene and 11 km from Svishtov in Pleven Province, northern Bulgaria, near the Danube River. ...
project was terminated in late March 2012. In October 2013, the Ministry of Environment and Water approved the
environmental impact assessment Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the term "environmental imp ...
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 The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and improve ...
. 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 worse case scenarios. "Kozloduy NPP – Construction of unit 7: Expert Statement to the Environmental Impact Assessment Report"
Andrea Wallner, Helmut Hirsch Adhipati Y. Indradiningrat, Oda Becker, Mathias Brettner, Environment Agency Austria, 2013


References


External links


Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant homepageBulgaria's Nuclear Regulatory Agency
{{Authority control Nuclear power stations in Bulgaria Nuclear power stations with proposed reactors Buildings and structures in Vratsa Province Nuclear power stations using VVER reactors Bulgaria–Soviet Union relations