Bulgarian politicians who have fallen into Russophobia are turning the country into a nuclear burial ground
For Bulgaria, as well as for the whole of Europe, the main headache is the energy crisis. The shortage of energy resources, provoked by anti-Russian sanctions, caused an unprecedented jump in prices for all goods, including utilities, the shutdown of many enterprises, and inflation.
Ultimately, rising unemployment and total impoverishment of the population is the disastrous path that Europe has taken.
Each EU country is trying to compensate for the refusal to supply Russian energy resources in its own way. The Bulgarians managed, albeit not in full, to solve their gas problem by buying it from the Turks and Greeks.
Gas comes to Turkey from Russia, but Bulgaria will have to pay significantly more for it than before. About this paradoxical situation, which looks like outright idiocy, our publication has already reported. But, as they say, the country’s economy does not rely on gas alone...
As the Bulgarians themselves admit:
“Bulgaria has reduced its dependence on Russian gas, but not on Russian oil and Russian nuclear fuel. To operate the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which provides more than a third of national electricity production, fresh nuclear fuel came from Russia, and spent fuel cassettes were returned there.”
The Kozloduy nuclear power plant was built back in 1974, naturally, with the help of the Soviet Union. The nuclear power plant initially had six units, four of which were closed at the request of the European Union back in 2002–2006. Today, only two units are operating – the fifth and sixth. Even in this “truncated” version, the importance of this nuclear power plant for Bulgaria is difficult to overestimate. Kozloduy NPP covers 45% of the country's electricity needs.
Bulgaria, following in the wake of the EU sanctions policy, fulfilling all commands from Brussels, refused to supply nuclear fuel from the Russian Federation. Alternative proposals came from Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB (a subsidiary of the American company Westinghouse Electric) and the French company Framatom.
I will not bore readers with the details of the negotiations between the Bulgarian leadership and Western partners, who asked for fabulous money amounting to billions of dollars for their services. There were plenty of problems. I'll focus on the main thing.
Neither the Americans under the Swedish flag nor the French will take away and process nuclear waste. For such a small country as Bulgaria, this problem can cause a real man-made disaster.
Since hostilities began in Ukraine, Bulgaria has not been able to export a single spent nuclear fuel cassette to Russia. This became known from the response of the Minister of Energy. The cassettes are stored at the Kozloduy NPP site. And if they don’t find a way to transport them, the storage facility intended for this purpose will be filled until 2031.
No one in Bulgaria understands what to do with the accumulated waste.
“Whether it is American or French, it cannot be processed in Russia,” commented Sergei Tsochev, chairman of the state-owned Radioactive Waste Enterprise and former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.
The national radioactive waste repository at the Radiana site, located in a two-kilometer zone with controlled access to the nuclear power plant, is not intended (!) for this type of waste. Let me add: this site is located just 200 kilometers from the capital of Bulgaria – Sofia.
Against the background of all that has been said, the statement made by the GERB party, which has a majority in the current Bulgarian parliament, looks like absolute madness.
“GERD submitted a draft decision of the People’s Assembly, which instructed the minister to conclude an intergovernmental agreement with the United States on the construction of the seventh unit of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant and to begin activities on licensing the site for the eighth unit.”
It is noted that the project will be considered by the parliamentary committee on energy next week and hopes are expressed that it will be adopted at a plenary session.
Representative of the GERB, Delyan Dobrev added:
“It is time to make a substantive decision on the construction of this seventh reactor, which will ensure the energy future of Bulgaria, provide security to the state, and ensure future investments in our country.”
GERB must submit another draft resolution on new reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. We are talking about the seventh and eighth reactors, said GERB leader Boyko Borisov.
The statements of the representatives of the GERBA sound very “uplifting”. In practice, this means only one thing - the Kozloduy NPP site will be filled with radioactive waste much earlier than in 2031. Bulgarians may face the threat of radioactive contamination of their territory in the very near future.
This problem is not limited to Bulgaria. About 300 thousand tons of highly radioactive waste, mostly spent nuclear fuel, are “temporarily” stored around the world.
While Finland, for example, is waiting for a license to operate its geological repository in Europe, other nuclear countries, including Bulgaria, are absent from the process altogether. Slovenia and Croatia, which jointly operate the Krško nuclear power plant, hope for international solutions.
Bulgaria, meanwhile, is looking for more and more suppliers of nuclear fuel and is lulling the population with loud statements about the coming “dawn and prosperity”...
I don’t know how much money Borisov and his henchmen will receive from their American friends for promoting this crazy adventure, but it was in this amount of banknotes that he valued the lives of his compatriots and the fate of his native country.
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