site.btaEuropean Parliament Ends Monitoring of Radioactive Waste Repository Construction in Bulgaria

February 20 (BTA correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov) - The Petitions Committee in the European Parliament decided to end the monitoring of the construction of a radioactive waste repository at Bulgaria's Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant. The decision was explained with the fact that the European Commission had found that the repository was being built in compliance with the law.

A European Commission official said the Commission has no reason to doubt the conclusion of a Bulgarian court that the suspicions of the petitioners are unfounded.

The petition against the construction of the facility had been submitted by a group of Bulgarian and Romanian citizens and NGOs. According to them, the future repository cannot be completely safe, because it will hold radioactive substances whose disintegration will last many years.

Bulgarian MEPs Andrey Slabakov, Angel Dzhambazki, Petar Vitanov and Emil Radev argued that the petition should be dropped. According to Slabakov, the petitioners are trying to derive benefit for themselves. Dzhambazki noted that the Bulgarian N-plant is the cleanest in Europe and nuclear energy production is the most environmentally friendly way of generating energy.

The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament also dropped a petition against extending the service life of the two operational reactors (units 5 and 6) of the Kozloduy N-plant. The Romanian petitioners complained that the operation of the Bulgarian nuclear facilities concern them as neighbours. RI/VE