Two companies submit bids to complete Bulgaria's Belene nuclear plant

02/02/2006

Russia's Atomstroiexport and the Czech company Skoda Alliance have submitted their bids for the construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant at Belene. The winning bidder for the 2 billion euro project is expected to be announced in about six months.

(Standart, Novinar, Trud, Dnevnik, The Moscow Times - 02/02/06; Sofia News Agency, Interactive Investor, Dnevnik, Mediapool, Sofia Echo - 01/02/06)

Two companies have submitted bids for the design and construction of Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant (NPP) at the town of Belene on the Danube River, about 250km northeast of Sofia. The winning bidder for the project, estimated to cost about 2 billion euros, should be announced by 1 August.

The Czech company Skoda Alliance unloaded 29 metal containers with half a tonne of paperwork in Sofia on Wednesday (1 February), while Russia's Atomstroiexport brought in 177 boxes with three tonnes of documentation the previous afternoon. Each of the companies has submitted different offers for three different project scenarios.

As the offers were officially opened Wednesday, Yulian Zhelyazkov of Bulgaria's National Electricity Company (NEK), who heads the Belene NPP tender commission, said the evaluation procedures would likely be completed in no less than six months' time. After that the commission will present its assessment to NEK's board of directors, which will announce the winning bidder. In the meantime, each of the companies will be allowed to change the parameters of their offers.

The tender commission will be assisted by consultants from Deloitte and Parsons.

According to local press reports, however, no matter which company is selected, it will be controlled to some extent by Russian giant Gazprom. Its bank is said to have recently acquired Skoda JS, which is part of the Skoda Alliance consortium. Gazprombank also owns 51 per cent of the shares of Atomstroiexport, which will use the French company Framatome as a subcontractor.

The conditions potential bidders had to meet included an annual turnover of at least $5 billion and previous experience in the construction and commissioning of pressurised water reactors.

The new NPP project envisions the construction of two Russian-designed VVER reactors of 1,000 megawatts each, the same as those of Units 5 and 6 at the Kozloduy NPP in Bulgaria and at the Czech Temelin NPP.

Canada's Atomic Energy Canada Ltd had proposed to supply two 700-megawatt CANDU heavy water reactors, but withdrew from the tender after Bulgaria decided against that technology.

Seeking to offset an expected drop in the country's electricity output following the planned shutdown of two 440-megawatt Soviet-era reactors at the Kozloduy NPP in December 2006, and to help sustain its leading position on the regional power market, Bulgaria gave the green light for the Belene plant last April.

Currently, Kozloduy accounts for about 40 per cent of Bulgaria's overall electricity output.

The Belene project was first launched in 1986, but was suspended in 1991, due to financial problems and pressure from environmental groups. By that time, Bulgaria had already spent over 1 billion euros on construction and the purchase of a 1,000-megawatt Skoda reactor.

The first of the two reactors is expected to become operational by 2011 and the second by 2013. The Sofia daily Trud quoted representatives of both companies as insisting Wednesday that, if they are selected, the price of electricity will be "sufficiently low"