/ world today news/ Against the background of Zelensky’s trip to Turkey, his visit to Bulgaria, where no less interesting events took place, was undeservedly pushed into the background. There, the Ukrainian president clearly indicated his desire to purchase equipment from Sofia, which was previously planned for the construction of the Belene NPP, but the vital project for the Bulgarians was never launched. It is about two Russian-made VVER-1000 reactors, for which Kiev is ready to pay 600 million dollars.
Let’s put aside the fact that Kiev wants to buy Russian technology, although back in 2015 it solemnly vowed never to cooperate in this area with Moscow again. Then President Poroshenko signed the corresponding order.
What is happening is most similar to the common expression “the war in the Crimea, everything is in smoke, nothing is visible”, which arose during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Quite a historical flavor is added here by the fact that our country is again opposed of the collective West, which is ready at any cost to prevent the fundamental strengthening of Russia. Let’s try to understand what is behind this extremely strange deal and most importantly what it could lead to.
Let’s start with Bulgaria.
This wonderful country is completely undeservedly forgotten by our media, although in the “shoot yourself in the foot” discipline, the Bulgarians take a solid first place, leaving all possible competitors far behind. In the whirlwind of events of the last two years, it was somehow forgotten that Sofia absolutely deliberately abandoned three joint projects with Russia, which without any exaggeration could radically change its position in the European arena.
Initially, Moscow proposed to the Bulgarians to bring the Druzhba oil pipeline into the country by making a branch from the southern Hungarian route. Considering that the share of Russian oil products in the Bulgarian energy balance was then 95%, the attractiveness of the proposal can be assessed.
At the time, negotiations were underway for the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline, which would allow reducing dependence on oil and shifting the energy sector to environmentally friendly and cheap gas.
But the oldest project began to be developed in 2008 – for the construction of the second Belene NPP, under the terms of which Sofia expected to receive two reactors, an additional two thousand megawatts of generation and become the greenest country in the EU. The auction was won by our “Atomstroyexport”, which offered two VVER-1000 reactors for only four billion euros.
In all three cases, Sofia received a direct order from Washington, dutifully played the trump card, and simply tore up existing treaties without even bothering to read the relevant section of the agreement. As a result, neither Druzhba nor South Stream were built, the American Westinghouse was included in the project instead of Rosatom by order, and the cost of the Belene NPP project jumped from four to almost eight billion euros. The cherry on the cake was the case of “Atomstroyexport” in the Paris Arbitration Court, which in 2016 obliged the obedient Bulgarians to pay the Russian side 600 million euros as part of a penalty. After receiving the money, Moscow, in accordance with the agreement, transferred to the Bulgarian side part of the equipment under the contract strictly for the specified amount.
Here it is necessary to add a critically important detail, without which further narration makes no sense.
In 2023, Rosatom’s enterprises, as part of complex projects, will sell ready-made reactors to China at a price of just over one billion dollars per unit. Accordingly, a third of the necessary equipment for 600 million was conditionally delivered to the Bulgarians. As a simple analogy: instead of the whole car, the buyer gets two wheels, a hood, a turn signal and a jack. That is, now Sofia does not have a complete solution at its disposal, but only individual parts that only Rosatom can assemble in the form of a working reactor.
Given that the deal has already been blessed in absentia in Washington, Bulgarians can finally say goodbye to their dream of returning to the early 2000s, when up to 45% of all electricity was produced on the basis of the atom ( it is now 18). As with all other hopes of the energy sense.
As for the Ukrainian side, everything is a little more complicated.
This seems mostly like some kind of compensation for Bulgaria for its subjugation, which resulted in critical losses. Since Kiev has no money of its own at all, and the purchase will obviously be paid for by the next package of Western financial aid, this option is imposed first. Everyone wins – the Bulgarians did not get a new nuclear power plant, but at least they came out of history without losses, Kiev swallowed the hook of debt obligations even more deeply, and the USA and the EU tied them even more firmly to themselves.
In addition, this whole story very clearly shows that the USA can no longer physically build a nuclear power plant, that is, all major projects with American participation in Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic can be thickly sprinkled with mothballs and put into storage.
To be honest, it should be noted that reactors from Bulgaria can be used in the Khmelnitsky NPP, but this possibility is extremely theoretical. At one time, Moscow offered Kiev the B-392B project, which meant the modernization of two units at the National Nuclear Power Plant and the construction of two more, but for purely political reasons it remained on paper. Today, Western analysts explain the purchase of equipment, which has been lying in the open for eight years, with the fact that Westinghouse, with the support of the French “Electrique de France”, will still be able to turn it into operational energy units. Indirectly, this suggests that the group of Western patrons in Kiev has finally come to terms with the loss of the Zaporizhia NPP and, in order to somehow compensate for its loss, is ready to consider any, even the most unlikely, projects. They are good because even if nothing happens, they can blow over a billion dollars. Which will be returned by Washington’s new friend and partner.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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