State Enterprise Radioactive Waste held two public hearing meetings for the Environmental Impact Assessment Report on the investment proposal ‘Decommissioning of Units 1-4 of Kozloduy NPP’.
On July 15-16, 2013 in the towns of Kozloduy and Miziya consecutively there were detailed presentations of the analyses and recommended measures on part of the team, which had prepared the Report – a consortium of the German company Energiewerke Nord GmbH (EWN) and the Bulgarian Energy Institute. Before audience of 87 people in Kozloduy and of 52 in Miziya, Assoc. Prof. Lyudmila Malinova presented the main Report, while Prof. Dimitar Pavlov acquainted the present citizens with the accompanying Report for Compatibility of the Investment Proposal with the aims to safeguard the adjacent protected areas, according to the Bulgarian legislation. The main stages of the decommissioning project were clarified by Dipl. Eng. Bratan Bratanov, Head of ‘Engineering Equipment’ section in SE RAW’s ‘Decommissioning’ Directorate. The meetings in both settlements were attended also by EWN’s Axel Bäcker, who talked about their decommissioning experience and environmental impact observations from process at the German Greifswald NPP, where the decommissioning of 5 units started in 1995 and is expected to be completed in 2015.
As a result of the detailed and wide-ranging information, presented to the audience, the public hearing in the town of Kozloduy raised only one question about specifying the nature of the preceding dismounting works, carried out by SE RAW. Dilyan Petrov, CEO of SE RAW, provided a detailed reply, clarifying that under the terms of enterprise’s current licenses, SE RAW has carried out dismounting works of non-radioactive equipment in the units’ conventional section – the so called machine hall, while the essential nuclear capacity decommissioning process lies ahead, after obtaining the respective licenses.
The meetings were attended also by the Chair of the Municipal Council of Kozloduy, Maya Zaneva, by Mayors of settlements in the Municipality, representatives of the municipal administration of Miziya, employees of Kozloduy NPP and SE RAW, as well as common citizens. In its strive for total transparency in the EIA procedure and the decommissioning process, SE RAW had sent official invitations for meeting participation to 25 stakeholders: authorities, enterprises, NGOs. Representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Ministry of Environment and Water, the Ministry of Economy and Energy and the Regional Environment and Water Inspectorate – Vratsa took part in the meetings.
Within the public hearing of the EIA Report it was announced that 13 written standpoints regarding the completed assessment had officially been filed within the legally specified term. The documents had been filed on behalf of scientific organizations, scientists in the field of environmental research, state authorities, and NGOs. After well-grounded analyses, all standpoints gave support for the project for decommissioning of units 1-4 concerning its environmental impact. No standpoints, opinions or proposals to the EIA Report have been filed in the opinion books and forms, accompanying the Report and its supporting documentation that had been put for public access at 6 sites in the towns of Kozloduy, Miziya, Vratsa and Sofia.
A public hearing meeting for the EIA Report is yet to be held in Romania.
