News

On 3 September 2019, State Enterprise Radioactive Waste (SE RAW) welcomed a Monitoring Mission of the Kozloduy Programme by the European Commission (EC) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)*. The EC delegation included: Massimo Garribba, Director, Directorate D – Nuclear energy, Safety and ITER, DG ENER (Directorate-General for Energy) and Gianfranco Brunetti, Deputy Head of UNIT D2 at DG ENER. The EBRD was represented by Valentin Seider, Associate Director – Head of KIDSF, Nuclear Safety Department.

Accompanied by SERAW’s Executive Director – Dilyan Petrov, the monitoring committee visited the Turbine Hall of the shutdown Units 1 to 4 of Kozloduy NPP, which are in the process of decommissioning. The Commission established that the dismantling of equipment in the conventional part of the units, scheduled for dismantling in accordance with the Decommissioning plan, is completed at 100%. This was SE RAW’s key commitment in accordance with the linear decommissioning schedule for the period until 2030. The first actual dismantling operations were carried out in the summer of 2011 and the process was completed at the end of August 2019 ahead of the scheduled deadline for that objective – 2020.

During a working meeting with the management of the Enterprise, held after the walkdown, the EC and EBRD’s representatives expressed satisfaction with the strict implementation of the Kozloduy Programme and good collaboration between the beneficiary and the international fund of contributors. During the meeting, ongoing and future decommissioning projects were discussed. The discussions focused on the good co operation between the organizations implementing decommissioning of shutdown nuclear facilities in the three countries receiving grant funds – Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

*    A monitoring mission is conducted every six months and aims to verify the actual progress of decommissioning activities and projects, which are funded through grant funds by the Kozloduy International Decommissioning Support Fund. The Fund is funded by the European Union as well as by 10 contributors – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The grant funds are administered by the EBRD.