Bulgaria intends to revive plans for the construction of a new reactor unit at the existing Kozloduy nuclear power station, which could use US technology, the Balkan country’s prime minister Boiko Borisov announced on 13 October during a visit to the site.

Kozloduy, on the Danube River in northwest Bulgaria, is the country’s only nuclear power station. It houses six reactor units, but only two are in commercial operation with four under decommissioning.

In an interview for one of Bulgaria’s national TV channels on Wednesday, energy minister Temenuzhka Petkova said the government plans to give a mandate to state-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) to contact US companies developing nuclear technologies to inquire about the potential costs of a new reactor unit. She said BEH would have until January 2021 to do this.

Ms Petkova said small modular reactors will be among the studied technologies, but a “European licence” will be a prerequisite for using the technology.

According to Ms Petkova, the project for a new reactor at Kozloduy will not exclude development of an already existing project to build two Russian reactor units at a new site, Belene, about 160 km east of Kozloduy.