In the period 3-5 October 2023, a mission was held at State Enterprise Radioactive Waste to report on the progress of activities on implementation of the Kozloduy Programme for Decommissioning of the shutdown 440-megawatt units of the Nuclear Power Plant, being implemented by the enterprise.
The following officials took part in the monitoring of the current Programme implementation for the first half of 2023: Massimo Garribba, Deputy Director-General of Directorate-General for Energy
(DG ENER) with the European Commission (EC), responsible for Directorates “Nuclear Energy, Safety and ITER” and “EURATOM safeguards”; Gianfranco Brunetti, Deputy Head of Unit, “Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Waste and Decommissioning”, DG ENER (D2), European Commission and Michel Sonck from the same unit; Valentin Šeider, Associate Director – Head of KIDSF, Nuclear Safety Department, EBRD; Nikolay Nikolov, Deputy Minister of Energy, in the capacity of Programme Coordinator on behalf of the Republic of Bulgaria for the Decommissioning Programme; Dilyan Petrov, SERAW Executive Director and senior management representatives of the enterprise.
During their three-day visit, the representatives of the EC, EBRD and the Ministry of Energy walked down the Controlled Areas of Specialized Divisions Radioactive Waste – Kozloduy and Decommissioning of Units 1 to 4, visited the Size Reduction and Decontamination Workshop for decommissioning materials, the Plasma Melting Facility, the Turbine Hall of the lower power units, where the production of reinforced-concrete containers is currently being carried out, as well as the reconstructed building in which this production is to be set up in the future. The delegation was particularly impressed after visiting the building site of the National Disposal Facility for Low- and Intermediate-Level Radioactive Waste, where a crucial stage of the facility construction was recently completed – the erection of the mobile roofs over the RAW disposal cells, as well as the 30-tonne overhead bridge crane, which will be used for the stacking operations of the reinforced-concrete containers loaded with waste.
In accordance with Council Regulation of the European Union on the provision of grant funds to Bulgaria in the process of decommissioning of nuclear facilities* and the applicable procedures, the implementation of activities which are financed by the Kozloduy International Decommissioning Support Fund (KIDSF), shall be subject to regular monitoring. Pursuant to the current rules, the Decommissioning Programme progress shall be monitored every six months in several successive steps. SERAW shall draft a Monitoring Report presenting the implementation of the planned activities for the respective period, which shall be reviewed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and submitted to the Directorate-General for Energy (ENER) of the European Commission (EC). This is followed by on-the-spot visit to the Kozloduy site by European Commission representatives in order to directly monitor on-the-spot the implementation of the activities specified in the document. The procedure ends with a final meeting of the Committee at which the results of the monitoring shall be summarised and the Monitoring Report shall accordingly be approved.
*COUNCIL REGULATION (EURATOM) 2021/100
