March 2 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's energy ministry should submit with parliament by the end of June specific proposals for the possible revival of a project for the construction of a second nuclear power plant (NPP) in the country, the Bulgarian National Radio reported on Friday.
"There is serious investment interest in Belene NPP," energy minister Temenuzhka Petkova said, as quoted by BNR.
"Talks will open with our neighbours here, in the Balkans, so I think it could become a good project, under certain terms, of course," Petkova added.
In 2008, Bulgaria hired Atomstroyexport to build a nuclear plant in Belene, reviving a project that had been mothballed for nearly two decades. After the project made scant headway, Sofia finally abandoned it with a parliament decision in February 2013. The government cancelled the project a year earlier due to disagreement over its estimated cost and failure to attract a strategic investor.
In December 2016, NEK paid 601.6 million euro ($704.9 million) as compensation to Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, for the equipment manufactured by the Russian company for the Belene project, which Bulgaria had abandoned.
"Neither when the project was launched, nor when it was halted in 2012, nor today, could the country carry out the project on its own," BNR quoted Delyan Dobrev, the chairman of Bulgaria's energy committee, as saying.