Belene Nuclear Power Plant
Encyclopedia
The Belene Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant
currently under construction 3 km from Belene
and 11 km from Svishtov
in Pleven Province
, northern Bulgaria
, near the Danube River. It is planned to substitute four VVER
-440 V230 reactors of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant
that are approaching the end of their service life.
On June 11, 2010, the Bulgarian government announced that it would freeze indefinitely the planned construction of the Belene nuclear power plant because it was uncertain when the investment would be returned. Five months later, on December 2, a non-binding memoranda of understanding was signed between NEK EAD
, Rosatom, Altran
and Fortum
, setting up a 6.3 bln. euro price on the power station, after months of unsuccessful talks on the cost and redeemability of the project itself.
decree on 20 March 1981. The site was handed to the Ministry of Economics on 31 December 1981 and the documentation for the construction site's preparation was prepared in late 1980 and early 1981 by Energoproekt Sofia
. The site's preparation in accordance with the draft projects began in the early 1981.
The foundations of the future power plant were laid in 1987 after the design of Atomenergoproekt Kiev
from the USSR and Energoproekt Sofia. The design suggested the construction of four VVER-1000/V 320 reactors. Between 1988 and 1990 40% of the construction work of reactor 1 was finished and 80% of the equipment was supplied. The project was abandoned in 1990 due to the restoration of capitalism in Bulgaria and only conservational work was done. Since then, measures have been continuously undertaken to preserve the supplied equipment, the construction site and the buildings; various investigations and assessments have been carried out with respect to the site suitability and the equipment status, all of which yielded positive conclusions. New investigations have been performed in relation to site safety and its compliance with international requirements. There has been particularly extensive research on the seismic safety of the chosen site. A number of missions were carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other bodies of authority. All these came up with positive conclusions and confirmations that the Belene site is suitable for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
A working group of experts was formed by an order of the Ministry of Energy and Energy Resources of 27 May 2003, which included experts from the Ministry of Energy and Energy Resources, the Ministry of Environment and Waters, the Ministry of Transport and Communication, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission, the State Agency for Civil Protection, the National Electric Company and BulAtom. A programme for the exprert commission's work was approved on 4 July 2003.
Pursuant to the above-mentioned decision, on May 10, 2005, the National Electric Company launched a procedure for selection of a Contractor for the engineering, procurement, and commissioning of Belene Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1&2.
In late October 2006 the offer of the Russia
n Atomstroyexport
, the French
Framatome (Areva)
, and the German
Siemens
using third-generation VVER-1000/V-446B reactors was approved by the National Electric Company. The offer was selected due to the highest safety level guaranteed by several new independent active and passive safety systems, as well as the option for Atomstroyexport to buy back the old unit supplied in the 1980s. Another reasons was the 60-year operation term. According to the Atomstroyexport president, the first unit would be in operation by 2013 and the second a year later.
On 7 December 2007 the European Commission gave its favourable opinion to the NPP, saying that it met all requirements of articles 41 to 44 of the Euratom Treaty.
A favourable opinion of the EC is one of the requirements for a Euratom loan.
On 18 January 2008, Atomstroyexport and Bulgaria's National Electric Company (NEC)
signed the contract for the design, construction and installation of units 1 and 2 of the Belene NPP. On 3 September 2008, the construction of the Belene NPP officially started. According to the Minister of Energy Petar Dimitrov, the Belene plant would operate "the most secure reactors existing in the world"; he also asserted that "the chance there would be a failure in those reactors is practically zero". Prime Minister Stanishev and Minister Dimitrov also called the project "a Renaissance for Bulgaria's nuclear energy" and "the largest industrial project in Bulgaria in the last eighteen years". More than 10,000 construction workers would be employed in the project, with the first reactor expected to be operating by the end of 2013, the second by the end of 2014.
Ground was broken in September 2008, with concrete to be poured in May 2009.
According to the schedule, Unit 1 of the A92 design has to be erected for 6.5 years and Unit 2 for 7.5 years with consideration of the specific licensing terms as per the Bulgarian legislation. The longest time consuming activities are related to the design work and equipment delivery (58 months), as well as to the very construction and installation (51 months).
type reactor that has been licensed by regulatory authorities in Russia. It has been declared to meet all safety requirements as well as recommendations from the IAEA and INSAG and has been also confirmed by a special analysis of leading experts from EDF
based on the recognized European Utility Requirements. This variant of the AES can make use of the two partially completed Belene NPP reactors started in the 1980s. The design directly uses a majority of the already built civil structures and facilities related to generic plant needs. Existing foundations and civil structures will be further evaluated with a view to incorporation into the new design.
design with four first-stage coolant circulation loops per reactor. Reactor nominal thermal power is 3010 MWt and electrical net power is 1011 MWe. A typical refueling process takes 14 days with annual outage of between 20-28 and 40–50 days, depending on the scope of ongoing repair works. The AES 92 Reactor Facility has a 60 year lifetime design.
Being a Light Water Reactor of third generation type the AES 92 design has improved safety as well as technical and economic features. Main advantages of the AES 92 design over existing VVER nuclear power plants of the previous generation are:
A specific feature of the third generation reactor presented in the AES 92 variant is the provision of a "core catcher" for severe accident cases. This insures against a containment integrity violation and release of highly radioactive substances into the environment.
Improved safety in the AES 92 design accounts for projected improvements in radiation protection parameters during its operation. The calculated individual effective dose of personnel exposure for this design is 1 mSv/a, which is commensurate with the permissible annual effective dose limit for a person in the general population and in compliance with the Bulgarian normative base and European directives. As to the design dose rate per person of the greater population due to radioactive releases by the NPP: this value for the AES 92 variant is lower than 0.05 mSv/a, which represents less than 1/3 of the permissible dose rate as per article 10 of NRA’s regulations ensuring the safety of NPPs. This dose is pertinent to the effect of all sources of releases at the site. The normalized annual radioactive releases are also indicative for the improved environmental impact parameters (for 1000 MW). While target criteria stipulated for the unit design was < 6.7 GBq/a for liquid releases, the design value for AES 92 is lower by one order - 0.11 GBq/a. Similarly, with target criteria below 33.3 TBq/a for the liquid releases, the design value for AES 92 is 2.9 TBq/a.
Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) management and the Radioactive Waste (RAW) handling is an important aspect of the environmental impact assessment for the new plant. The fuel envisaged to be used for AES 92 allows for up to 50 years storage of spent fuel assemblies in a storage pool and then an additional 10 years of “dry” storage keeping. The general plan provides for SNF transportation to Russia for reprocessing.
Plasma incineration of solid wastes is envisaged for high-level waste generated during plant operation, with separate processing of liquid wastes depending on radioactivity. The anticipated total amount of conditioned wastes that will require disposal is less than 50 m3 per year for one reactor unit.
(EIA), which "does not contain adequate information on the seismic conditions, nor does it address beyond design basis accidents or give details of the potential impacts of decommissioning". Furthermore, following legal action by environmental groups, the authors of the original EIA confirmed, in court, that it was flawed and would require a new EIA once a designer and builder were appointed. The total cost of the project is now estimated by the operator to be around €7 billion (€4 billion for the power stations plus associated infrastructure development costs).
Environmental organizations Greenpeace
, Friends of the Earth
(Europe), Urgewald, Bankwatch, World Information Service on Energy
and the Bulgarian NGO BeleNE! oppose the plant's construction, and have expressed the following concerns:
Concerns regarding the construction of the plant have mainly been felt in nearby Romania
, with articles in the newspapers such as Cotidianul
, România Liberă
and Ziarul even going as far as comparing the project with Chernobyl
despite a new generation of VVER reactors is to be used, and not the cheaper graphite
-moderated
RBMK
series like Chernobyl's.
In short, critics say the project is economically flawed, open to corruption and mismanagement, and will cement Russian dominance of Bulgaria's energy sector. The government says global energy pressures make the project necessary.
Nuclear power plant
A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...
currently under construction 3 km from Belene
Belene
Belene is a town in Pleven Province, Northern Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Belene Municipality. The town is situated on the right bank of the Danube river, close to the town of Svishtov...
and 11 km from Svishtov
Svishtov
Svishtov is a town in northern Bulgaria, located in Veliko Tarnovo Province on the right bank of the Danube river opposite the Romanian town of Zimnicea. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Svishtov Municipality...
in Pleven Province
Pleven Province
Pleven Province is a province located in central northern Bulgaria, bordering the Danube river, Romania and the Bulgarian provinces of Vratsa, Veliko Tarnovo and Lovech. It is divided into 11 subdivisions, called municipalities, that embrace a territory of 4,333.54 km² with a population, as...
, northern Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, near the Danube River. It is planned to substitute four VVER
VVER
The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design...
-440 V230 reactors of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant
Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant
The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Bulgaria situated north of Sofia and east of Kozloduy, a town on the Danube river, near the border with Romania. It is the country's only nuclear power plant and the largest in the region...
that are approaching the end of their service life.
On June 11, 2010, the Bulgarian government announced that it would freeze indefinitely the planned construction of the Belene nuclear power plant because it was uncertain when the investment would be returned. Five months later, on December 2, a non-binding memoranda of understanding was signed between NEK EAD
NEK EAD
Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania NEK is the Bulgarian national electricity distributing company also being the second largest company in Bulgaria...
, Rosatom, Altran
Altran
Altran Technologies, SA is a European consulting firm founded in 1982 in France. Altran, self dubbed the European leader in high technology and innovation consultancy, operates primarily in technology and innovation consultancy, accounting for nearly half of its turnover...
and Fortum
Fortum
Fortum Oyj is a Finnish publicly listed energy company, which focuses on the Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland and the north-west of Russia. After acquisition of Russian energy company TGC-10 in year 2008, Western Siberia has become an important operating area for Fortum. The head of the company...
, setting up a 6.3 bln. euro price on the power station, after months of unsuccessful talks on the cost and redeemability of the project itself.
Early project
The discussions on constructing a second nuclear power plant started in the early 1970s. The Belene site was approved for the construction of a second Bulgarian NPP by a Council of MinistersCouncil of Ministers of Bulgaria
The Council of Ministers is the main authority of the executive power in the Republic of Bulgaria. It consists of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria and all the specialized ministers....
decree on 20 March 1981. The site was handed to the Ministry of Economics on 31 December 1981 and the documentation for the construction site's preparation was prepared in late 1980 and early 1981 by Energoproekt Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
. The site's preparation in accordance with the draft projects began in the early 1981.
The foundations of the future power plant were laid in 1987 after the design of Atomenergoproekt Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
from the USSR and Energoproekt Sofia. The design suggested the construction of four VVER-1000/V 320 reactors. Between 1988 and 1990 40% of the construction work of reactor 1 was finished and 80% of the equipment was supplied. The project was abandoned in 1990 due to the restoration of capitalism in Bulgaria and only conservational work was done. Since then, measures have been continuously undertaken to preserve the supplied equipment, the construction site and the buildings; various investigations and assessments have been carried out with respect to the site suitability and the equipment status, all of which yielded positive conclusions. New investigations have been performed in relation to site safety and its compliance with international requirements. There has been particularly extensive research on the seismic safety of the chosen site. A number of missions were carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other bodies of authority. All these came up with positive conclusions and confirmations that the Belene site is suitable for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
Restart
In 2002 the Government decided in-principle for a re-start of the Belene Project. Fulfillment of all legislative requirements allowed the Government to approve the construction of a nuclear power plant on the Belene site with total rated capacity of 2000 megawatts. The Ministry of Energy began to renew the available equipment and examine the possible construction of the new nuclear plant. In February 2003 Minister Milko Kovachev sent letters to six leading companies in the sphere of nuclear energy asking them to provide up-to-date technical, economic and financial information regarding the project.A working group of experts was formed by an order of the Ministry of Energy and Energy Resources of 27 May 2003, which included experts from the Ministry of Energy and Energy Resources, the Ministry of Environment and Waters, the Ministry of Transport and Communication, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission, the State Agency for Civil Protection, the National Electric Company and BulAtom. A programme for the exprert commission's work was approved on 4 July 2003.
Pursuant to the above-mentioned decision, on May 10, 2005, the National Electric Company launched a procedure for selection of a Contractor for the engineering, procurement, and commissioning of Belene Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1&2.
In late October 2006 the offer of the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n Atomstroyexport
Atomstroyexport
Atomstroyexport is the Russian Federation's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly. It belongs to Atomenergoprom holding with 49.8% of shares owned by Gazprombank...
, the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Framatome (Areva)
Areva
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power; it also has interests in other energy projects. It was created on 3 September 2001, by the merger of Framatome , Cogema and...
, and the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Siemens
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
using third-generation VVER-1000/V-446B reactors was approved by the National Electric Company. The offer was selected due to the highest safety level guaranteed by several new independent active and passive safety systems, as well as the option for Atomstroyexport to buy back the old unit supplied in the 1980s. Another reasons was the 60-year operation term. According to the Atomstroyexport president, the first unit would be in operation by 2013 and the second a year later.
On 7 December 2007 the European Commission gave its favourable opinion to the NPP, saying that it met all requirements of articles 41 to 44 of the Euratom Treaty.
A favourable opinion of the EC is one of the requirements for a Euratom loan.
On 18 January 2008, Atomstroyexport and Bulgaria's National Electric Company (NEC)
NEK EAD
Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania NEK is the Bulgarian national electricity distributing company also being the second largest company in Bulgaria...
signed the contract for the design, construction and installation of units 1 and 2 of the Belene NPP. On 3 September 2008, the construction of the Belene NPP officially started. According to the Minister of Energy Petar Dimitrov, the Belene plant would operate "the most secure reactors existing in the world"; he also asserted that "the chance there would be a failure in those reactors is practically zero". Prime Minister Stanishev and Minister Dimitrov also called the project "a Renaissance for Bulgaria's nuclear energy" and "the largest industrial project in Bulgaria in the last eighteen years". More than 10,000 construction workers would be employed in the project, with the first reactor expected to be operating by the end of 2013, the second by the end of 2014.
Ground was broken in September 2008, with concrete to be poured in May 2009.
According to the schedule, Unit 1 of the A92 design has to be erected for 6.5 years and Unit 2 for 7.5 years with consideration of the specific licensing terms as per the Bulgarian legislation. The longest time consuming activities are related to the design work and equipment delivery (58 months), as well as to the very construction and installation (51 months).
Technical Features
The AES 92 variant proposed for implementation at the Belene NPP site is a new generation VVERVVER
The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design...
type reactor that has been licensed by regulatory authorities in Russia. It has been declared to meet all safety requirements as well as recommendations from the IAEA and INSAG and has been also confirmed by a special analysis of leading experts from EDF
Électricité de France
Électricité de France S.A. is the second largest French utility company. Headquartered in Paris, France, with €65.2 billion in revenues in 2010, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of 120,000+ megawatts of generation capacity in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.EDF is one of...
based on the recognized European Utility Requirements. This variant of the AES can make use of the two partially completed Belene NPP reactors started in the 1980s. The design directly uses a majority of the already built civil structures and facilities related to generic plant needs. Existing foundations and civil structures will be further evaluated with a view to incorporation into the new design.
AES 92 Reactor
Belene NPP will be a Pressurized Water ReactorPressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...
design with four first-stage coolant circulation loops per reactor. Reactor nominal thermal power is 3010 MWt and electrical net power is 1011 MWe. A typical refueling process takes 14 days with annual outage of between 20-28 and 40–50 days, depending on the scope of ongoing repair works. The AES 92 Reactor Facility has a 60 year lifetime design.
Being a Light Water Reactor of third generation type the AES 92 design has improved safety as well as technical and economic features. Main advantages of the AES 92 design over existing VVER nuclear power plants of the previous generation are:
- Ensuring for fast and sure termination of the nuclear reaction in the reactor core thanks to two individual completely independent reactivity control systems;
- Redundancy for all safety functions provided by the use of both active and passive safety systems (including a Passive Residual Heat Removal System and Passive Filtering System), which require neither operator intervention nor electric power supply;
- Use of a special enclosure to contain potential accidents. This structure is composed of a primary containment of pre-stressed reinforced concrete and a leak tight metal liner, secondary reinforced concrete containment, and cast concrete external structure designed to withstand a large range of internal and external events.
A specific feature of the third generation reactor presented in the AES 92 variant is the provision of a "core catcher" for severe accident cases. This insures against a containment integrity violation and release of highly radioactive substances into the environment.
Improved safety in the AES 92 design accounts for projected improvements in radiation protection parameters during its operation. The calculated individual effective dose of personnel exposure for this design is 1 mSv/a, which is commensurate with the permissible annual effective dose limit for a person in the general population and in compliance with the Bulgarian normative base and European directives. As to the design dose rate per person of the greater population due to radioactive releases by the NPP: this value for the AES 92 variant is lower than 0.05 mSv/a, which represents less than 1/3 of the permissible dose rate as per article 10 of NRA’s regulations ensuring the safety of NPPs. This dose is pertinent to the effect of all sources of releases at the site. The normalized annual radioactive releases are also indicative for the improved environmental impact parameters (for 1000 MW). While target criteria stipulated for the unit design was < 6.7 GBq/a for liquid releases, the design value for AES 92 is lower by one order - 0.11 GBq/a. Similarly, with target criteria below 33.3 TBq/a for the liquid releases, the design value for AES 92 is 2.9 TBq/a.
Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) management and the Radioactive Waste (RAW) handling is an important aspect of the environmental impact assessment for the new plant. The fuel envisaged to be used for AES 92 allows for up to 50 years storage of spent fuel assemblies in a storage pool and then an additional 10 years of “dry” storage keeping. The general plan provides for SNF transportation to Russia for reprocessing.
Plasma incineration of solid wastes is envisaged for high-level waste generated during plant operation, with separate processing of liquid wastes depending on radioactivity. The anticipated total amount of conditioned wastes that will require disposal is less than 50 m3 per year for one reactor unit.
Controversy
There is controversy over the Environmental Impact AssessmentEnvironmental impact assessment
An environmental impact assessment is an assessment of the possible positive or negative impact that a proposed project may have on the environment, together consisting of the natural, social and economic aspects....
(EIA), which "does not contain adequate information on the seismic conditions, nor does it address beyond design basis accidents or give details of the potential impacts of decommissioning". Furthermore, following legal action by environmental groups, the authors of the original EIA confirmed, in court, that it was flawed and would require a new EIA once a designer and builder were appointed. The total cost of the project is now estimated by the operator to be around €7 billion (€4 billion for the power stations plus associated infrastructure development costs).
Environmental organizations Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
, Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...
(Europe), Urgewald, Bankwatch, World Information Service on Energy
World Information Service on Energy
The World Information Service on Energy is an anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be an information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues...
and the Bulgarian NGO BeleNE! oppose the plant's construction, and have expressed the following concerns:
- negative effect on the tourist industry and the agriculture of northern Bulgaria
- safety concerns over the use of nuclear technology
- location in a seismic active zone
- the expense of the project
- risk of terrorist attack
- problems with the transportation, procession and preservation of the nuclear waste
- complete unnecessity of further nuclear power in the first place, as better options are available.
Concerns regarding the construction of the plant have mainly been felt in nearby Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, with articles in the newspapers such as Cotidianul
Cotidianul
thumb|right|Old logo of Cotidianul newspaper, used in the [[inter-war period]], and in the early 1990sthumb|right|The logo used between 2003 and 2007...
, România Liberă
România Libera
România Liberă is one of the leading newspapers in Romania. Based in Bucharest, the Romanian-language daily has a paid daily circulation of 40,000....
and Ziarul even going as far as comparing the project with Chernobyl
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
despite a new generation of VVER reactors is to be used, and not the cheaper graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
-moderated
Neutron moderator
In nuclear engineering, a neutron moderator is a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, thereby turning them into thermal neutrons capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235....
RBMK
RBMK
RBMK is an initialism for the Russian reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalniy which means "High Power Channel-type Reactor", and describes a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor which was built in the Soviet Union. The RBMK reactor was the type involved in the Chernobyl disaster...
series like Chernobyl's.
In short, critics say the project is economically flawed, open to corruption and mismanagement, and will cement Russian dominance of Bulgaria's energy sector. The government says global energy pressures make the project necessary.