Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant
| Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant | |
|---|---|
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 Location of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant in Bulgaria
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| Country | Bulgaria |
| Location | Kozloduy |
| Coordinates | 43°44′46″N 23°46′14″E / 43.74611°N 23.77056°ECoordinates: 43°44′46″N 23°46′14″E / 43.74611°N 23.77056°E |
| Status | Operational |
| Construction began | 1970 |
| Commission date | 28 October 1974 1974 (Unit 1) 1975 (Unit 2) 1980 (Unit 3) 1982 (Unit 4) 1987 (Unit 5) 1991 (Unit 6) |
| Decommission date | 2004 (Units 1 & 2) 2007 (Units 3 & 4) |
| Nuclear power station | |
| Reactor type |
VVER-440 VVER-1000 |
| Power generation | |
| Units operational | 2 x 960 MWe |
| Units planned | 1 x 1,250 MWe |
| Units decommissioned | 4 x 440 MWe |
| Nameplate capacity | 1,920 MWe |
| Annual gross output | 16,314 GWh |
The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Bulgaria situated 120 kilometres (75 mi) north of Sofia and 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) east of Kozloduy, a town on the Danube river, near the border with Romania. It is the country's only nuclear power plant and the largest in the region. The construction of the first reactor began on 6 April 1970.
Kozloduy NPP currently manages 2 pressurized water reactors with a total output of 2000 MWe. Units 5 and 6, constructed in 1987 and 1991 respectively, are VVER-1000 reactors. By 2017 Unit 5 will be upgraded to reach a capacity of 1,100 MWe, as part of a programme to extend the life of the unit by 30 years. A seventh 1,000 MW unit may be installed, using a part manufactured reactor from the terminated Belene project for which Bulgaria has paid €600m.
The older and smaller Units 1 to 4 were all shut down by 2007.
Kozloduy NPP previously operated four older reactors of the VVER-440/230 design, but under a 1993 agreement between the European Commission and the Bulgarian government, Units 1 and 2 were taken off-line at the beginning of 2004. An unpublished 1995 report by the United States Department of Energy had supposedly listed those units among the world's "ten most dangerous reactors". On 21 October 2010, licenses for the shutdown reactors were transferred to Bulgaria state radioactive waste enterprise DP RAO, signaling the formal beginning of decommissioning work.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Units 3 and 4, originally licensed for operation until 2011 and 2013, respectively, underwent substantial safety improvements and, after rigorous inspections, received positive reviews from the IAEA in 2002, and from the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) in the following year, concluding that "no technical reasons exist for the early closure of units 3 & 4". Backed by these findings, the government had hoped to convince the European Commission to allow a postponement of the agreed pre-accession shutdown; from a legal and political standpoint, however, this proved untenable. Units 3 and 4 were taken out of operation in the final hours of 2006, immediately prior to the country's accession to the European Union.
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