Bulgaria renounces the project for the Belene Nuclear Power Plant, announced Bulgarian Deputy Minister of Finances Vladislav Goranov.

He made the statement after the end of the weekly sitting of the cabinet. On the site of the Belene plant a gas power plant would be built, Goranov added. The commissioner Russia reactor for the Belen project will be mounted as #7 at the existing Kozloduy NPP.

On Thursday the Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism Delian Dobrev will leave for Moscow to inform officially the Russian side for the suspension of the Russian-Bulgarian project for the construction of a second nuclear power plant on Bulgarian territory.

PM: We decided to abandon Belene NPP project and pay for the first reactor

“Today at the sitting of the Council of Ministers we decided for Bulgaria to abandon the Belene NPP project and to pay for the first reactor, which will be finalised in October. We have to pay EUR 140 million more for it,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said speaking with journalists at the parliament, FOCUS News Agency reporter informs.

“We have given a mandate to Minister Dobrev [Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism Delyan Dobrev] to start the procedure of installing the reactor as a seventh unit of the already existing Kozloduy NPP, because at the price of around EUR 6 billion, with the credit resource we are offered – with between 10% and 12% interest, and with 6 years needed for construction, this power plant will eventually cost around EUR 10 billion or BGN 20 million. We cannot afford paying for it and obliging several generations to pay this money – we cannot do this. At the same time we have this nuclear risk and if something there, in this seismic region, everything will be at Bulgaria’s expense,” Borisov remarked