Westinghouse Electric Company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to initiate planning for the potential deployment of one or more of its AP1000 reactors at Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

Georgy Kirkov, chairman of Kozloduy NPP-Newbuild, and Elias Gedeon, senior vice president for Westinghouse Energy Systems (Image: Westinghouse)

The MoU establishes a joint working group which will "evaluate regulatory, licensing and design bases to ensure full compliance with applicable regulations as well as a streamlined execution path to enable Bulgaria to achieve its nuclear energy goals".

Kozloduy NPP-Newbuild is a special project company owned by the existing nuclear power plant and has been established to manage the project to build one or two new reactors at the site, which already has two Russian-designed VVER-1000 reactors, Kozloduy unit 5 and unit 6. Westinghouse signed a 10-year agreement in December to supply nuclear fuel to one of the units from 2024.

David Durham, Energy Systems President for Westinghouse, said: "This cooperative agreement sets us on a path toward providing both economic and environmental benefits for the Bulgarian people while bolstering the country’s energy security."

In January, Bulgaria's parliament asked ministers to negotiate with the US government for a new AP1000 unit at Kozloduy. The vote urged action to be taken by 1 March which would speed up the process of approval and construction of what would be unit 7 of the Kozloduy plant, as well as initiating a licensing and environmental impact assessment procedure for what would be unit 8.

Kozloduy 1-4 reactors were VVER-440 models which the European Commission had classified as non-upgradeable and Bulgaria agreed to close them down during their negotiations to join the European Union in 2007.