Bulgaria’s two-unit Kozloduy nuclear power station has been granted open-ended operating licences which will be subjected to periodic safety reviews under a new legal framework set up earlier this year, a statement by the country’s regulator said.

The Balkan nation’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA) said the same type of operating licence was also granted to a dry storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the Kozloduy site.

The Kozloduy nuclear station, on the Danube River in northwest Bulgaria, has two 1,003-MW VVER-1000 pressurised water reactor units that have been in commercial operation since 1988 and 1993.

They are the country’s only operational nuclear plants and according to International Atomic Energy Agency data generated about 40% of Bulgaria’s electricity in 2023.