"It has become a tradition, an extremely vicious practice that GERB introduced - to pass decisions through the legislative power, with which they impute various obligations, to instruct the executive power, which violates the separation of powers. Meaningless work does not stop boiling in the parliament," said the energy minister expert and former head of the Bulgarian regulatory body of the Fifth Unit at the Kozloduy NPP - Prof. Georgi Kaschiev, in the studio of "The Day ON AIR".

He explained that this is unconstitutional because, according to the law, it is not the National Assembly that can make decisions on the construction of new capacities, but the government.

"When the government of Boyko Borisov decided to stop the construction of the Belene NPP in 2012, it decided that the Minister of Energy should study the possibilities of building the Seventh Unit at the Kozloduy NPP. A design company for new capacities was organized. Under the government of Oresharski reached an agreement with "Westinghouse" for the same reactor, which Borisov's government did not continue at the time. After that, in 2018-2019, they again decided to start the construction of the Seventh Block," said Prof. Georgi Kaschiev to Bulgaria ON AIR.

GERB submitted a proposal to the National Assembly for two new reactors for the Kozloduy NPP

He specified that at the moment there is no start of construction, no project, only an approved site and an approved environmental impact report.

The guest rated this as unprofessional, harmful and pointless.

"The Ministry of Energy is preparing a project strategy for sustainable development, which will be released soon. The construction of new capacities is also planned there, but at least there is a justification there," noted Prof. Georgi Kaschiev.

He explained that the Fifth and Sixth Units potentially have about 30 years of life, but the problem is that this proposal diverts attention from keeping the Fifth and Sixth Units in operation under the new geopolitical conditions in Europe, as with the deteriorating relations with Russia we need to find other service providers.

"These two blocks have been under construction since 2013. The construction time has already exceeded the original estimates twice. The reason is that nothing comes easy. Meanwhile, during construction, the Westinhouse company had to declare bankruptcy to protect itself from the creditors, which further delayed and made the construction more expensive. So far, these two reactors in the States cost more than 30 billion dollars. The reality is more than 30 billion dollars for the two units in Bulgaria," stressed Prof. Georgi Kaschiev.

According to him, the consequences of the war in Ukraine should be analyzed first, because nuclear power plants there are becoming the object of great concern, uncertainty and vulnerability, and we must wait to see how the war ends.

"Before we start building new reactors, I hope the dear politicians will finally clarify what they will do with the consequences of nuclear energy, because during the time of Boyko Borisov, this problem was completely neglected, the requirement to export spent nuclear fuel was not respected. There is no way not to make a deep geological repository to store either the spent fuel or the highly active waste obtained from it," said Prof. Georgi Kaschiev categorically.

Kozloduy NPP

Sixth block of the Kozloduy NPP