Bulgaria Should Submit to Russia its Options for Belene NPP by the End of June

By the end of June, the Bulgarian Ministry of Energy must provide Russia with the various options for using the Belene NPP equipment. This is written in a summary of the talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Bulgarian counterpart Rumen Radev in Sochi, according to Russian state news agency TASS, quoted by Actualno.com.

Such a request means that in fact, Russia is pressing Bulgaria to make a quick decision on the future of Belene NPP. We recall that the government gave green light to the project to be managed in the Parliament and eventually thawed. The Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenujka Petkova said at the beginning of last week that by the end of this year, the state may declare a procedure for the selection of a private investor to build Belene, but only if the National Assembly untie the project. Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev explicitly said that Belene NPP could not be built without ''Atomstroyexport'' because the reactors are Russian, given the unofficial information that the CNNC wants to use Chinese reactors in the project. 

The Bulgarian Energy Minister has also said something else about Belene - that first of all they have to choose how to realize the project if the parliament decides to make the project legal with the state support of the option with a strategic private investor and at the same time with state participation and a blocking quota. We remind you that at the end of last week Petkova announced that the intangible assets will be valued because the material assets are already valued and if the project is EUR 10.5 billion, as recommended by BAS - it should not exceed this limit, the state so far has given BGN 3 billion for this project and this is just over 10% and the blocking quota should be 34%.

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