Three companies have expressed interest in building the new units at Kozloduy nuclear power plant

The South Korean Hyundai Engineering, plus the U.S. Fluor, and Bechtel Corporation are the three companies that have expressed interest in the procedure for building a new nuclear power plant at the Kozloduy NPP. This was announced by Valentin Nikolov, executive director of the only Bulgarian nuclear power plant, during the third International Nuclear Conference, held today in Sofia.

He, however, clarified that this meant interest in bilateral talks as no official documents have been submitted yet.

The expression of interest procedure was launched a few days ago with a deadline of 2 February, after which the management will compile the so-called "short list".

Everyone who has a serious intention and meets the conditions for the scale of this order can participate," said Valentin Nikolov.

Requirements for the contractors

He explained that at this stage there is no requirement for the candidate companies to have worked with the AP1000 reactor technology before.

"Westinghouse is not involved in the selection of the new power plant builder, only the state," Nikolov clarified further.

Bulgaria’s interests in this are represented by the working group, which was formed by order of the Minister of Energy. It is composed of experts from the Bulgarian Energy Holding, Kozloduy NPP - Newbuild EAD, as well as from the nuclear power plant itself. It’s that group that makes the rules. It is expected that, again by order of the energy minister, an evaluation committee will also be made.

The future builder, together with Westinghouse, must sign a contract and proceed to a final investment decision once the financing is clarified.

One month before that, i.e. at the end of March this year, the feed contract with Westinghouse will be finalized, Nikolov also said.

The Front-End Engineering & Design contract signed last summer defines preliminary engineering activities for the construction of a new American reactor with AP1000 technology. It also includes activities to assess the possibilities for integrating the Bulgarian industrial enterprises in the project for the construction of a new AP1000 nuclear power plant unit and for the maximum use of the existing infrastructure at the Kozloduy NPP site.

Valentin Nikolov added that the financial model for the new capacity at Kozloduy NPP will consist of 30% equity capital and 70% borrowed capital. Preliminary talks have been held with US banks. Some of them only finance American technologies.

Bulgaria's goal is to be the first to introduce the AP1000 technology in Europe," said Nikolov.

What are the plans for Unit 8?

When asked by Economic.bg whether the call is for both new units, Nikolov explained that at the moment there was a decision to select a builder only for Unit 7 of the Kozloduy NPP. Such a decision for Unit 8 is yet to be made.

Most likely, though, in order to avoid a second round of negotiations, Unit 8 will also be included.

In any case, the builder will most likely do both units," concluded Valentin Nikolov.

According to him, 5-10 thousand people will be directly involved in the construction of Units 7 and 8 of Kozloduy NPP.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov