According to Reuters article published on March 28, 2023, Bulgaria will sign agreements with U.S. company Westinghouse and France's EDF (EDF.PA) for a pre-project engineering study in the nuclear power sector, the energy ministry said on Tuesday.
The European Union member has sought to boost its energy security since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has already signed deals with EDF and Westinghouse for the supply of nuclear fuel as it seeks to diversify away from Russian supplies.
"The purpose of pre-project engineering studies and analyses is to establish all technical and economic parameters of possible projects for new nuclear power, including what are the options for using the existing equipment by integrating it into a modern complete system," the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, Bulgarian news agency BTA cited Deputy Energy Minister Elenko Bozhkov as saying that Bulgaria will agree an engineering deals with Westinghouse concerning the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant and with EDF regarding the Belene nuclear power project.
Bulgaria would aim to ensure maximum input from Bulgarian industry in the contract with Westinghouse and to make maximum use of the existing infrastructure, Bozhkov said.
Intergovermental agreements will be signed on the contracts, he added.
The EDF executive director in charge of new power units will visit Bulgaria on April 4, Bozhkov said.
The Kozloduy plant on the Danube River produces about 35% of the country's electricity.
The Belene project has been cancelled and restarted several times since the 1980s. In 2018 Sofia revived the project to make use of two nuclear reactors it bought for more than 620 million euros from Russia's Rosatom in compensation for scrapping an original project in 2012.
