Two VVER-1000 nuclear reactors stored at Bulgaria’s Belene NPP site will not be sold to Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister and Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Atanas Zafirov told a briefing at the party’s headquarters following a meeting of its Executive Bureau. He emphasised that this was a collective decision taken by the ruling coalition, adding that the reactors were crucial to Bulgaria’s energy security and economic independence.
Zafirov stated that nuclear energy is a reliable, cost-effective, and predictable energy source. He argued that Bulgaria has both the infrastructure and the expertise to develop this sector domestically and that selling the reactors would have been a grave mistake.
Zafirov stressed that all coalition partners, including GERB, backed the decision not to proceed with the sale. He said he had discussed the matter with partners in the Joint Management Council, as well as with GERB Party leader and former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. He underlined the strategic nature of the decision, especially amid rising global energy prices and ongoing instability in the sector. While the decision is backed by the government coalition, parliamentary confirmation remains pending.
However, the issue may be complicated following the subsequent withdrawal of the Democracy, Rights and Freedoms (DRF) parliamentary group from the coalition government over unrelated issues. Without the DRF’s 19 deputies, the three parliamentary groups backing the coalition – the GERB party and the Union of Democratic Forces (GERB-UDF), the BSP – United Left, and the populist There Is Such a People party – have 102 seats combined, which is short of the 121 majority needed in the 240-member legislature. The shaky and politically disparate coalition was formed in January ending months of gridlock following a snap election in October 2024 – the seventh since 2021.
Negotiations on selling the two Russian-made VVER-1000 reactors, initially intended for the unfinished Belene NPP, began in 2023. In July 2023, the Bulgarian parliament commissioned the Ministry of Energy to start negotiations with Ukraine for sale of the equipment and in February this year, Ukraine’s parliament approved a plan to acquire the reactors for expanding the Khmelnitsky NPP. The deal was endorsed by Bulgaria’s parliament at a value exceeding $600m.
The reactors, along with four steam generators and four circulation pumps, have been stored for years at the Belene site near the Danube River after Bulgaria abandoned plans to build the Belene NPP in favour of constructing two new nuclear units at Kozloduy NPP using US-designed AP1000 technology from Westinghouse, with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction as the builder. The equipment for the suspended Belene project is owned by the National Electric Company and the money from its sale was expected to go to the Kozloduy expansion.
Bulgarian Energy Minister Zhecho Stankov confirmed to bTV that the BSP had discussed the reactors with Borissov, but said the issue must first be discussed at the Joint Management Council and that a decision by parliament would be needed to overturn the previous decision to sell the reactors. He indicated that factor was Europe’s growing need for electricity. “In the United States, I had meetings with investors who showed interest in building huge data centres, and the biggest challenge is to provide energy … and investors want low-emission energy, and nuclear energy is emission-free, he said.
Borissov told journalists in Parliament that there is interest from American companies in building artificial intelligence centres in Bulgaria. He added that representatives of the top three global funds, who have an exceptional interest in building huge data centres, had contacted the Bulgarian authorities and visited. He explained that representatives of these funds had asked Bulgaria to postpone its decision to sell the Belene reactors to Ukraine in order to discuss the matter to US President Donald Trump.
“We have the best infrastructure, the best power transmission system, a qualified workforce and selected builders and contractors for reactors 7&8 [of the Kozloduy NPP]”, he noted. He recalled that delegations from the US had already come to Bulgaria to see the Belene reactors. He stressed that Bulgaria, with the support of American funds and together with Westinghouse, should build such data centres, which would be the best way to use these reactors and that Bulgaria should not “give away BGN1bn ($580m)” by selling them.
“That’s why Zafirov talked to me, I told him: Let’s wait, we have the option to sell them, we haven’t sold them for 10 years, we might sell them next month, we might sell them in five months. But until then, I want President Trump, Elon Musk, Microsoft, Bill Gates, to be interested in whether we can do this thing, I don’t believe there is a Bulgarian who wouldn’t want the most powerful artificial intelligence to be here,” Borissov argued. “I want to do something with the British, with the Americans, that will be huge. If it works, it works. If not, we sell them.”
