Westinghouse partners with Cameco, Urenco on nuclear fuel supply for Bulgaria's Kozloduy NPP

The contracts help advance Bulgaria's goal to diversify its nuclear fuel supply away from Russia by ensuring VVER nuclear fuel fabrication and delivery which involves only Western companies, the official told SeeNews in a telephone interview.

Cameco, which will mine the uranium in Canada, and Urenco, the largest supplier of uranium enrichment services for the civil nuclear industry outside Russia, are the subcontractors picked by Westinghouse under a ten-year agreement it signed in December with Kozloduy NPP for delivery of nuclear fuel for Unit 5, the official explained.

Westinghouse will assemble the nuclear fuel cartridges and deliver the fuel out of its fabrication site in Sweden, after the nuclear materials have been supplied by its subcontractors.

A nuclear fuel supply chain will be established which will include partners Urenco, Cameco, UK-registered Uranium Asset Management (UAM) and Westinghouse, Urenco said in a press release on Thursday.

In a separate statement, Cameco said that it will provide the total equivalent of about 5.7 million pounds of uranium concentrate by the end of 2033 to meet the full requirements of Kozloduy's Unit 5 reactor.

Bulgaria's sole nuclear power plant operates two Russian-designed VVER-1000 reactors of 1000 MW each, Unit 5 and Unit 6. Their operational licences will expire in 2027 and 2029, respectively. Bulgaria has so far received all fresh nuclear fuel for its two reactors at Kozloduy NPP from Russian nuclear fuel cycle company TVEL. In 2021, in line with requirements by the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), Bulgaria signed a contract with the Swedish unit of Westinghouse to conduct an analysis of an alternative fuel type for Kozloduy's Unit 5.

Last month, Westinghouse and Kozloduy NPP also agreed to begin studying the potential construction of one or two new reactors at the nuclear power plant on the Danube.