Viewing cable 06SOFIA716, NUCLEAR POWER INCIDENT HIGHLIGHTS BULGARIA'S

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RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 SOFIA 000716 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/18/2026 
TAGS: ENRG TRGY EUN PGOV SENV IAEA BU
SUBJECT: NUCLEAR POWER INCIDENT HIGHLIGHTS BULGARIA'S 
PRE-ACCESSION JITTERS 
 
Classified By: A/DCM Brad Freden for reason 1.4 (b) & (c). 
 
 1.(C) Summary: A recent incident at the Kozloduy nuclear 
power plant has demonstrated the reluctance of Bulgarian 
authorities to be fully transparent about safety problems 
concerning their aging nuclear reactor. Authorities on March 
1 discovered that a number of control rods used to shut down 
the reactor in an emergency situation were inoperable during 
a reduction of power at the reactor. Even though the IAEA 
characterized the incident as a relatively minor one, the 
Bulgarian government remained tight-lipped about what exactly 
had happened at the plant. It was only after a German 
newspaper article speculated that Bulgaria had had a 
near-Chernobyl accident that Bulgarian officials were 
compelled to explain what had occurred. The GOB's behavior 
undoubtedly reflects its anxiety over EU accession and angst 
over having to shut down Kozloduy Units 1 through 4 as part 
of its membership bid. It also underscores the work still to 
be done on creating a culture of greater official 
transparency. End Summary. 
 
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WHAT HAPPENED AT KOZLODUY ON MARCH 1 
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2.(C) On March 1 a short circuit caused one of the cooling 
pumps at Kozloduy's Unit 5 reactor to fail. As part of the 
plant's emergency protection system, power in the reactor was 
immediately decreased to 67 percent with the aid of the 
system's control rods. Soon after the reactor was powered 
down, the plant's managers discovered that a number of the 
control rods had failed to drop into the proper position to 
slow or stop the nuclear reaction. Further investigation 
revealed that 22 of the 61 rods were failing to engage. The 
plant managers eventually decided to completely shut down the 
reactor to further analyze the problem. They later learned 
that the failure of the control rods was due to "sticking" 
between the rods and their drive mechanism. However, once the 
rods were physically moved or activated, they appeared to 
function fine. To prevent further sticking until a permanent 
solution could be found, the plant instituted a short-term 
corrective measure of moving the rods every day for the first 
week after the event and then once a week until the end of 
the current fuel cycle in June. Authorities now are working 
with the reactor's Russian designer, Gidropress, and the 
Institute of Metal Science at the Bulgarian Academy of 
Science to determine the precise cause of the sticking and 
develop a long-term solution to the problem. 
 
¶3. (C) Sergey Tzotchev, the chairman of Bulgaria's Nuclear 
Regulatory Agency (NRA), told us that Bulgarian authorities 
had explained the incident to the IAEA at the biannual 
meeting of INES (International Nuclear Event Scale) national 
officers in Vienna May 2-5. The IAEA agreed with the plant's 
initial decision to categorize the event as a Level 1 event 
(Level 7 being the most dangerous). The NRA later recommended 
the event be characterized as Level 2 (i.e., an "incident" 
rather than an "anomaly"), according to the INES scale, 
because the incident revealed that more than one element had 
failed to react and there had been faults in related 
procedures. The IAEA concurred with this and agreed with 
Bulgarian officials that the population was never in any 
danger. 
 
¶4. (C) Tzotchev and his staff reassured us that if there had 
been an emergency and the reactor needed to be shut down 
immediately, the 39 remaining rods would have been sufficient 
to perform this action. However, whether they could have 
engaged these 39 rods as quickly as necessary (in a second or 
two) is not clear. If the incident--and the problems of the 
control rods sticking--had occurred a few months later, it is 
quite possible that more rods would have failed and the 
reactor would not have been able to be shut down quickly in 
an emergency. This concern was expressed to us by XXXXXXXXXXXX. According to him, the event at Kozloduy 
was the first time a nuclear reactor had experienced this 
type of problem. He said the event represents a clear decline 
in the margin of safety at the plant. He also said that the 
decision by the plant's managers to leave the reactor 
functioning for six hours after discovering the problem was a 
clear violation of safety guidelines. 
 
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GOVERNMENT EVADES FULL DISCLOSURE OF INCIDENT 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) More troubling, however, is how the Bulgarian 
authorities handled the incident by failing to come clean 
 
SOFIA 00000716 002 OF 002 
 
 
publicly. From the outset, Bulgarian officials stayed quiet 
about anything out of the ordinary occurring at the plant. 
Initial press reports on March 2 or 3 indicated the reactor 
had to be shut down because of electrical problems that had 
caused one of the cooling pumps to automatically be switched 
off. The authorities never acknowledged a problem with the 
control rods or provided specific details or explanations of 
what had happened. The NRA told us the agency had published 
a short press release on its website summarizing the incident 
two weeks after it occurred. The media, however, was never 
informed about the press release, which went unnoticed. The 
issue--apparently a routine shutdown--disappeared completely 
from the local press until the German newspaper Der Spiel 
published an article in late April quoting the former head of 
the NRA, Georgi Kaschiev, who alleged a serious accident at 
Kozloduy had occurred and the government was intentionally 
trying to cover it up. We heard about the incident and the 
problems with the rods a week before the Der Spiel article 
from an Embassy contact involved in the energy field. He 
alleged that the manager of the plant had been told to keep 
the incident quiet or risk being "knocked off." 
 
¶6. (C) Even after the article prompted the Bulgarian press to 
probe the authorities for more information, the GOB remained 
defensive. Minister for Economy and Energy, Rumen Ovcharov, 
told the press on April 25 that "nothing out of the ordinary" 
had happened, and speculation surrounding the incident was 
the work of people who have done "everything they could to 
discredit Bulgaria's energy sector and the country as a 
whole." Ovcharov refused to respond to Kaschiev's specific 
allegations, saying Bulgarian's nuclear power sector should 
not be held hostage to "personal conflicts." It was clear, 
however, that other politicians were not pleased about being 
caught flat-footed. When asked by journalists about the 
incident at Kozloduy, the Speaker of Parliament, Georgi 
Pirinski, responded that he had only learned about the event 
from the media. Pirinski added that he believed the 
government had reacted appropriately, but certain questions 
needed to be answered, like why the public was not informed 
of the incident in a timely manner. 
 
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EU NERVOUSNESS A KEY FACTOR IN LACK OF NUCLEAR TRANSPARENCY 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
 
¶7. (C) Bulgaria's last-minute jitteriness over its EU 
accession bid seems clearly to be behind authorities' 
reluctance to be fully open about safety concerns related to 
Kozloduy. Ovcharov himself admitted that this was "the worst 
possible time" to be spreading "rumors" about faults in the 
plant. Many government officials, as well as the public, are 
still smarting over Bulgaria's agreement to close down 
Kozloduy Units 1 through 4 as a condition for its EU 
membership. Officials still claim that most nuclear experts 
would agree that Kozloduy 3 and 4 are now safe following 
recent upgrades, and that the EU is being overly cautious at 
Bulgaria's expense. Ovcharov commented in March that Bulgaria 
is the only country that "will have to pay a high price for 
EU membership before its accession" due to the reactors' 
closure. Recent reports that energy prices may climb as a 
result of the loss of 3 and 4 have renewed calls by some 
critics to hold a national referendum on the units' closure. 
Any indication that Unit 5, which is to remain operational, 
is unsafe would seriously undermine the assertion of many 
officials that the forced closure of Units 3 and 4 is unjust, 
and could begin sowing doubts in Brussels about the safety of 
Units 5 and 6. Moreover, the Bulgarian government, already 
concerned about a possible delay in its accession bid, 
probably fears giving Brussels one more reason to put off its 
EU membership. 
Beyrle