With five votes in favour, six against and six abstentions, members of the Parliamentary Energy Committee rejected here on Wednesday a draft decision proposed by the BSP for Bulgaria to suspend negotiations and actions on the sale of the long production cycle equipment owned by National Electricity Company EAD, intended for the Belene Nuclear Powe Plant (NPP) project's.
With three votes in favour, five against and ten abstentions, members of the Committee also rejected a draft proposal by the There Is Such a People party to task the caretaker Energy Minister to remove the steam generators from the Belene NPP equipment, which are subject to negotiations for sale to Ukraine, pending an analysis of the use of these steam generators for the needs of the Kozloduy NPP.
The two draft proposals were made in connection with the increasing incidents with the steam generator of Kozloduy NPP's Unit 6.
"I would like to give a pragmatic approach and draw the attention of the MPs to my report, submitted on June 28 to the National Assembly, which is precisely related to Parliament's decision to sell the equipment," said caretaker Energy Minister Vladimir Malinov. He added that in this report "I have proposed to change the deadline for the negotiations with the Ukrainian side by 180 days from the decision of the National Assembly."
Based on this proposal, the Energy Committee's Chair, GERB-UDF MP Delyan Dobrev, undertook to prepare a new proposal to be voted on Thursday.
Minister Malinov assured the MPs that the Ukrainian side has confirmed their interest for the purchase of the equipment with or without one steam generator.
According to the information provided by the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Tsanko Bachiyski, the incidents with the steam generator of Kozloduy NPP's Unit 6 have been increasing since 2021 and have been attributed to a specific section of the third steam generator of the unit in question. According to him, there is apparently "an unlocked factor, which needs to be established". Bachiyski briefed lawmakers on the technical specifics of the events at Unit 6 and said that at this stage the situation is far from the maximum allowable blockage of up to 5% of the steam generator tubes, or 550 in total. So far, 18 have been clogged up, sixh of which were clogged up in the last three years.
Ivan Andreev, Executive Director of Kozloduy NPP, briefed the MPs on the timeline for the steam generator's replacement. According to his report, the required time for its replacement in a Russian reactor is four months. What Kozloduy NPP knows at this stage about the compatibility of the steam generator from the Belene NPP equipment with that of the Kozloduy NPP is the existence of "small design differences that should be subject to analysis," in Andreev's words. He added that a procedure has been opened to select a consultant to study the issue.
The Kozloduy NPP CEO added that there is a similar problem in Slovakia and the Bulgarian side is in contact with their Slovakian counterparts so that they can share their experience during the scheduled annual maintenance. Separately, Kozloduy NPP has already turned to the Spanish company Tecnatom, with whose help the diagnostics and controls at the plant have been set up.
"They have helped us in finding those defects that were present in the shutdown now. We are working on a procedure so that they can be present at the site and assist us to identify which tubes are high-risk," Andreev said.
/RY/
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