It appears likely that the decommissioning of the Jaslovské Bohunice V1 nuclear power plant will require an additional €130 million, the European Parliament’s Committee for Budget Supervision delegation chair Jens Geier said at a press conference held in Bratislava on Tuesday, July 16. The delegation visited Slovakia between July 15 and 16 to assess the progress of the decommissioning.
"In comparison to Lithuania's Ignaline and Bulgaria's Kozloduj, the process at Jaslovské Bohunice is the most advanced. Decommissioning plans and schedules have been passed, so we're able to plan with certainty that Bohunice will be completely shut down in 2025. However, there is also the issue of the lack of resources in funding, namely €130 million. Although that's less than in Lithuania and Bulgaria, it still represents a deficit not tackled yet," said Geier as quoted by the TASR newswire.
"In Jaslovské Bohunice, Slovakia, I met with maximum technical expertise and organisational skill among the management, which knows exactly what it wants,” said Czech EP delegation member Vojtěch Mynář. “Based on the documents that we had the opportunity to study, it's clear to see that the process is well-thought from the start until the end. These experiences will serve when conceiving a certain how-to model concerning the decommissioning of other nuclear facilities in Europe, of which there are dozens. EU states will certainly demand that Europe should participate in some way and for various reasons in their decommissioning."
Slovak MEP Vladimír Manka stressed to the SITA newswire that the shutdown of the reactors is not in danger, however. According to him, these additional funds will be needed some time after 2020. He says that
Slovakia's priority is for €200 million for the V1 decommissioning to be approved for the 2014-2020 EU budget. MEP Ingeborg Grasle, however, believes that the decommissioning of Bohunice could proceed at a faster pace. She also pointed out that Slovakia does not have to acquire all of the missing €130 million from the EU. According to her, Slovakia would prefer not to receive the additional funding from the EU.
Until now, Slovakia has spent €450 million on the decommissioning, with Brussels promising to allocate another €200 million, the Sme daily wrote. The Nuclear and Decommissioning Company JAVYS and National Nuclear Fund should contribute another €363 million.
JAVYS is getting ready for the second phase of decommissioning of two nuclear units of the V1 Nuclear Power Plant in Jaslovské Bohunice. The Environment Impacts Assessment (EIA) of the second decommissioning phase has already commenced. The second phase of V1 decommissioning should start in 2015. It involves the dismantling of radioactive components and all remaining non-reusable structures, as well as other activities that will carry over into the second phase. The EU contributes to the decommissioning of the V1 plant through the Bohunice International Decommissioning Support Fund, managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, SITA wrote.
Slovakia shut down the first unit at V1 at the end of 2006 and the second unit at the end of 2008 under the Accession Treaties to the European Union. The construction of the V1 plant was launched in April 1972 and it was managed by the company Energetická Investičná Výstavba Slovenska. The main contractors were Energoprojekt Praha, LOTEP Leningrad, Škoda Praha, Hydrostav Bratislava and SKODAEXPORT Praha. Capital expenditures amounted to 5.5 billion in Czechoslovak crowns. The first reactor of the V1 unit nuclear power plant was connected to the grid on December 17, 1978 and the second on March 26, 1980. During its operation, the V1 power plant generated a total of more than 159 million megawatt-hours of electricity, which is approximately 5.7 years of electricity consumption in Slovakia.
(Source: TASR, Sme, SITA)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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