Kyiv could use major VVER components for completion of two units at Khmelnitski
Bulgaria’s parliament has tasked the country’s energy minister with beginning negotiations with his Ukrainian counterpart on the proposed sale of Russia-made nuclear island equipment designated for the suspended Belene nuclear power project.
While Ukraine’s president Volodymir Zelenskyi was on a state visit to Sofia on Thursday (6 July), a 155-strong majority of the 240-member National Assembly voted in favour of the proposal.
Bulgaria received equipment, including two reactor pressure vessel and steam generator sets, from Russia for the two-unit Belene project in 2018 after settling a Russian compensation claim to the International Court of Arbitration in 2016 for €620m ($675m) resulting from an earlier cancellation of the project in 2012.
Parliament’s decision said that the price sought from a possible sale to Ukraine of the equipment should not be lower than €601.6m, which is the nominal compensation payment Bulgaria paid to Russia excluding incurred interests.
Sofia had several unsuccessful attempts to build two VVER-1000 pressurised water reactor unit at Belene, a site on the Danube River in northern Bulgaria, about 150 km east of Kozloduy, Bulgaria’s only commercial nuclear station.
The Belene project was born at the end of Bulgaria’s socialist period but abandoned in the early 1990s. The project was formally revived in 2008, then cancelled in 2012, only to be revived again in 2018. However, Bulgaria failed to find investors since and the project was cancelled finally in 2021.
Belene Project Now ‘Impossible’
A report to parliament’s energy committee said that the the Belene nuclear power station project has become “impossible” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The report also said that Kyiv has been looking for VVER-1000 nuclear island equipment with the idea of using it for the completion of Units 3 and 4 at the Khmelnitski nuclear power station in west Ukraine.
The two unfinished Khmelnitski units were started in 1986 and 1987 and got caught up in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident of 1986 with work getting suspended in the final years of the Soviet Union, also partly due to financing concerns.
According to Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom, Khmelnitski-3 is around 75% complete and Khmelnitski-4 about 28%. The company had expressed its desire to complete the units and build new ones at the site even before the war with Russia began in February 2022.
Energoatom and US-based Westinghouse Electric have since signed agreements for the construction of nine new AP1000 nuclear power units in Ukraine, including two at the existing Khmelnitski site.
Sofia has also signed a contract with Westinghouse for a front-end engineering study to be conducted at the existing Kozloduy site for the construction of a new AP1000 PWR unit. The site has two VVER-1000 PWR units in commercial operation which provide about a third of Bulgaria’s electricity.
The previous caretaker government had been talking to France’s Framatome to help find ways to complete Belene using the VVER equipment stored at the site.
However, Ivaylo Mirchev, one of the members of parliament behind the idea to sell the Belene equipment to Ukraine, told the local BTV broadcaster that unofficial talks on the move started six months ago, during the term of the caretaker government.
In January 2023, the caretaker government presented a new energy strategy until 2053 which included the proposed deployment of up to two Westinghouse-made AP1000s units at Kozloduy and the revival of Belene.
A new regular government majority was formed in early June and the energy strategy seems increasingly likely to be revamped.
