The Bulgarian parliament has voted in favour of accelerating the negotiations with the US government for the development of a new Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. The parliament is seeking to speed up the process of approval and construction of the Kozloduy-7 reactor and to initiate a licensing and environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure for another reactor (Kozloduy-8).
Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear power plant includes four reactors (two 408 MW units and two 440 MW units) that were closed in 2003 and 2006 as agreed in the framework of Bulgaria's accession to the European Union, and two operational VVER-1 000 reactors (2x930 MW) (units 5 and 6), which are licensed to operate until 2027 for unit 5 and until 2029 for unit 6. Bulgaria has long been considering developing a 7th reactor worth €4bn at Kozloduy, selecting Westinghouse to develop an AP1000 reactor in 2014 and offering the company the possibility to take a 49% stake in the project. The preliminary shareholder agreement on the project expired in 2015 and the project, which still needs a strategic investor, remained in limbo until January 2021, when the government approved plans to use the Russian equipment provided for the cancelled Belene nuclear power project for the Kozloduy-7 project.