February 13 (SeeNews) - Russian nuclear engineering company Izhorskiye Zavody said it it is loading equipment for the abandoned Belene nuclear power plant (NPP) project for shipment to Bulgaria.
Izhorskiye Zavody, part of OMZ Group, has been loading the equipment which includes a reactor vessel, two pressure compensators and 24 hydraulic accumulators, in the sea port of Saint Petersburg since January 20, the company OMZ said in a statement on Sunday.
The rest of the equipment including another reactor vessel will be delivered separately in 2017 in accordance with the schedule agreed by Russia's Atomstroyexport and Bulgaria's National Electricity Company (NEK).
In December, Bulgaria’s NEK said it paid 601.6 million euro ($638.7 million) as compensation to Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, for the equipment manufactured by the Russian side for the Belene nuclear power plant project, which Bulgaria had abandoned.
The sum was awarded to Atomstroyexport by the International Court of Arbitration in Geneva, which earlier in 2016 ruled that NEK must pay compensation to the Russian company for ditching the project for the construction of the nuclear power plant in Belene, on the Danube river
With the sum awarded to Atomstroyexport fully paid in December, NEK will now take possession of the manufactured equipment.
In 2008, Bulgaria hired Atomstroyexport to build a 2,000 MW nuclear plant in Belene, reviving a project that had been mothballed for nearly two decades. After the project made scant headway, Sofia finally abandoned it with a parliament decision in February 2013. The government cancelled the project a year earlier due to disagreement over its estimated cost and failure to attract a strategic investor.
($ = 0.9392 euro)