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Armenia Shares Bulgaria's Nuclear Problems With Eu


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Armenia shares Bulgaria's nuclear problems with EU

 

By Ulrich Buechsenschuetz

 

In mid-June, Bulgaria successfully closed its accession negotiations with the EU. Sofia now awaits an EU summit in December to officially endorse Bulgaria 's EU membership. "If all goes to plan, an Accession Treaty could be signed in the first part of 2005, and Bulgaria would join the EU on 1 January 2007," the EU's official "Enlargement Weekly" noted on 21 June. Although the publication noted that the closure of the last chapters of the EU's acquis communautaire was "provisional," it is extremely unlikely that any of the chapters could be renegotiated.

 

But this is exactly what Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, a former chairman of the opposition Socialist Party (BSP), and other leading politicians want to make the public believe. For Parvanov, incumbent BSP Chairman Sergey Stanishev, and Energy Minister Milko Kovachev, the current arrangement with the EU is flawed in one particular area -- the energy sector. What Parvanov, Kovachev, and others criticize is that the Bulgarian government has finally given in to the EU's pressure to decommission the four older reactor blocks of the nuclear-power plant near Kozloduy in northern Bulgaria . The Kozloduy facility consists of six Soviet-designed reactors-- four VVR-440s and two newer units. The two oldest VVR-440 reactors at the Kozloduy facility were shut down at the end of 2002 under EU pressure. Under a 1999 bilateral agreement, the Bulgarian government has also agreed to decommission the remaining two reactors of this type by the end of 2006.

 

The bilateral agreement between Bulgaria and the EU is part of the EU's strategy to urge countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe to decommission Soviet-era nuclear-power plants (for an overview of the EU strategy see http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relatio...intro/index.htm.

The EU argues that the construction of the VVR-440 reactors is basically unsafe and cannot be improved to the extent that they meet Western security standards. The main problem, however, is that many transition countries, including Slovakia , Bulgaria , and Lithuania , are heavily dependant on the electricity produced by these reactors.

 

This is also true for Armenia . Its only nuclear power plant in Metsamor outside Yerevan produces up to 40 percent of the country's electricity. The plant consists of two VVR-440 reactors, only one of which is currently operating. In the wake of a devastating 1988 earthquake in Armenia , Metsamor was shut down altogether for safety concerns. These concerns were mainly due to the combination of the construction and the fact that Metsamor is located in a seismically active area. But in the mid-1990s, the government decided to put one reactor back into operation to alleviate crippling power shortages.

 

Although both the older reactors in Kozloduy and the plant in Metsamor have been continuously upgraded since the mid-1990s with the help of the United States and the EU, the EU still insists that the VVR-440-type reactors be decommissioned on safety grounds. This strategy was successful in Slovakia (now an EU member) and EU-candidate states such as Bulgaria , not least because of the EU's financial support for the decommissioning process and the prospect that accession negotiations would otherwise drag on far longer. Earlier this year, the EU decided to allocate an additional 350 million euros ($434 million) over and above the 200 million euros already granted since 2000 to help cover the costs of decommissioning the older blocks of the Kozloduy nuclear plant.

 

In a similar approach, the EU also offered in 2002 to support the Armenian government with 100 million euros ($124 million), if it decided to decommission Metsamor. Yerevan initially agreed in 1999 to close Metsamor by 2004, but has since gone back on that pledge, arguing that the plant could continue to operate without posing any risk. "The European side wants Armenia to set a date [for Metsamor's closure]," Industry Minister Karen Chshmaritian told a news conference on 8 June after he returned from Brussels . "However, Armenia cannot set a date without having financing resources [to replace the facility] and clarifying the entire procedure for the closure."

 

Chshmaritian reiterated Yerevan 's position, saying that as much as $1 billion is needed for decommissioning Metsamor safely and finding alternative sources of inexpensive energy. "The Energy Ministry presented its calculations [to the EU], according to which the total cost of the work would be worth that much," Chshmaritian said.

 

Both the Armenian government and the Bulgarian defenders of the Kozloduy plant argue that experts both from Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agree that the lifespan of the upgraded VVR-440 reactors can be extended by at least one more decade beyond the envisioned closure dates. However, a recent special report on Kozloduy prepared by the Bulgarian mediapool.bg news agency (see http://www.mediapool.bg/site/project/index.shtml) clearly shows that the information provided by government officials is often manipulated.

 

This certainly helps Parvanov adopt a populist approach when he defends the older blocks in Kozloduy. On 2 June, he told the participants of an international conference in Sofia that he could easily have accepted the closure of the older blocks at the facility if they had been recommended by experts. "The paradox is that the demand to close the four small blocks of the nuclear power plant Kozloduy does not come from experts nor from the national regulatory body," Parvanov said. Arguing that the closure of the energy chapter in Bulgaria 's EU accession talks was a "tactical mistake" by the incumbent government, he asked whether the current EU members could not show understanding toward a future member and refrain from punishing the citizens for the government's mistakes. In other words, he suggested (as he had done before), reopening the negotiations on the energy chapter and finding an arrangement which would make it possible to extend the lifespan of the old Kozloduy reactors. As things stand, this is unlikely to happen. Jean-Christophe Filori, spokesman for EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, told "RFE/RL Newsline" in an e-mail on 9 July that "before considering such a situation, the Bulgarian government should officially request the reopening of the negotiation chapter -- which it does not intend to do, as Mr. Verheugen was told during his last visit to Bulgaria in early June. Therefore the question does not arise.

 

"Any change in the terms of the negotiation requires the unanimous approval of all 25 EU member states. There is little chance -- to say the least! -- that all 25 member states will agree to change their position on Kozloduy.... Bulgaria made a firm commitment in 1999 to close down the four reactors concerned. We are confident that Bulgaria will stick to its commitment," Filori wrote. Since the Armenian government has not yet agreed to the decommissioning of Metsamor, it remains to be seen whether the EU will make the degree of funding Armenia is to receive within the framework of the Wider Europe-New Neighborhood Policy program contingent on the plant's closure.

 

RFE/RL 15/07/04

 

Copyright © 2001. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

www.rferl.org

 

 

PS: At present there are plans to build new nuclear power station with Canadian, German and French technology and equipment. Maybe somehting to ponder about.

Edited by gamavor
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